Important Watches, Collectors’ Wristw...

Hotel Noga Hilton, Nov 14, 2004

LOT 424

?Le Cerf-volant? Piguet & Meylan and Frédéric Rochat, Genève, No. 581, music attributed to Nicole Frères, No. 634, completed circa 1828, retailed by Honoré Pons, Paris, at No. 1089. Very fine and extremely rare, bronzed and ormolu, hour and half-hour striking musical clock with singing bird automata.

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Sold: CHF 215,250

C. Designed as a Medici vase, the movement set in the bronzed body, with foliate gilt bronze bezel, applied ribbons and acanthus decoration, ?eggs and dots? on the collar border, musical movement in the oval mahogany veneered base with glass dome protection. Automaton scene with multicolored feathered bird with moving body, wings, tail, opening beak and turning head, perched on the fountain and flanked by realistic compositions of potted flowers and foliage. In the foreground, a boy and a girl on a gilt seesaw are flying a paper kite.D. White enamel, radial Roman numerals. Blued steel Breguet hands. M. Brass, circular, ?mouvement de Paris? type by Honoré Pons (Paris), No. 1089, with going barrel for both the going and striking trains, anchor escapement, short pendulum with silk suspension. Striking on a bell with count wheel on the back plate. Brass full plate singing bird and automaton movement with fusee and chain, stacked cams, fly regulator and shaped bellows for the bird, the three twisted glass rods of the fountain driven by means of a cam and levers. Musical movement playing three tunes in the base with going barrel, fly regulator, 23.5 cm pinned cylinder with comb of 32 groups of four teeth and one of five.Signed Meylan and Frédéric Rochat, Genève, No. 581, on the singing bird and the automaton movement, Pons? mark on the clock movement back plate, with the No. 1089.Dim. 64 x 40 x 19 cm, excluding the glass dome.


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Grading System
Grade:
Case: 3

Good
Movement: 3*

Good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense
Dial: 3 - 01

Notes

The music plays three minutes before the hour, then the singing bird and the automata are activated, three minutes before the clock strikes. The clock?s mainspring is signed ?Ls. Peupin 1826?, that of the automata ?Boulet S?bre 1828?. Vases with singing birds are extremely rare. Only three are known to exist, including the present clock. A very large one by Ingold, previously in the Dugast collection, was in the Time Museum in Rockford Illinois. It is described and illustrated in ?Le Monde des Automates? by A. Chapuis and E. Gélis, pages 127 to 129. The third one, now in a private collection, from approximately the same period, is signed Bautte & Moynier à Genève and dated 1834. The present example is certainly the earliest of these, being completed circa 1828. Philippe Samuel Meylan (1772-1845) came as a young man to Geneva where he worked for the Godemar Frères in quality of Master worker. Afterwards he went back to Brassus where he founded a little factory in 1811. He then returned to Geneva where he definitively settled. He met another watchmaker from his own village, Isaac Piguet, with whom he entered into partnership, founding the Piguet & Meylan firm, which would last from 1811 to 1828. It specialized in minute cadratures, musical watches, skeleton or automaton watches, mechanical animals and figures, he is also credited with the invention of the bagnolet caliber. Isaac Daniel Piguet (1775-1841) was the son of Pierre Moïse Piguet and Elisabeth Nicole. He married Jeanne Françoise Capt around 1795, and around 1800 settled in Geneva with his family. Isaac Daniel Piguet went into business with Henry Daniel Capt, his brother-in-law, on February 10, 1802. The association between Piguet & Meylan came to an end in 1828. Piguet and his son David Auguste established a new company, Piguet père & fils, located no 69 rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Isaac Daniel Piguet died in Geneva, on January 20, 1841, at the age of 66. Nicole Frères Makers of musical movements, active in Geneva from 1828 to 1835. In 1831 their workshop was at passage des Bergues, rue du Cendrier. The present piece is illustrated in "Flights of Fancy, Mechanical Singing Birds", by Sharon and Christian Bailly, Antiquorum Editions, 2001, p. 235.