Exceptional Collectors Timepieces, Ho...

Geneva, May 15, 2005

LOT 118

"Revolving Escapement Carriage Clock" Antoine Redier et fils (R.R.), Paris, Breveté, No. 110104. Made circa 1895. Very fine and very rare gilt brass eight-day carriage clock with revolving escapement and striking and repeating the hours and half hours.

CHF 13,000 - 16,000

EUR 8,500 - 10,000 / USD 11,000 - 14,000

Sold: CHF 14,950

C. Multi-piece, "canelee", gilt brass, hinged carrying handle,dedicated moulded top with oval bevelled glass viewing port,moulded pillars, the front, sides and hinged door fitted withbevelled glass, moulded base. D. White enamel with radialRoman numerals, outer minute indexes and Arabic five minutenumerals. Blued steel Breguet hands. M. Rectangular polishedbrass plates, four turned pillars, two spring barrels, silvered andgilt square platform engraved with foliage, with rotating escape-mentcarriage with two-arm bridge, straight line lever escape-ment,bimetallic compensation balance, blued steel flat balance-spring,regulator arm, striking the hours on both the hour andhalf-hour on a gong, repeating activated by depressing a buttonon the top. Dial and movement signed.Dim. 144 x 92 x 83 mm.


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Grading System
Grade: AA

Very good

Case: 4 - 8 - 14
Movement: 3*

Good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense

Dial: 3 - 01

Notes

Revolving escapements are very occasionally found placed on the top of carriage clock movements in the position normally occupied by a standard platfrom lever escapement. The rotation of the carriage can be seen and appreciated through the top glass of the case. The employment of a revolving escapement still requires the use of a contrate wheel and it was probably the desire to add mystique rather than for any practical reason that this type of escapement was used, although such an arrangement would still help to equalise the going of the clock in different positions. Not strictly speaking either a tourbillon or a karrusel, in many ways, the escapement of this clock owes more to the tourbillon than the karrusel, in particular that the drive to the escapement comes from the carriage itself. There are one or two other known examples of carriage clocks with a very similar revolving escapement to the present clock, one signed "Auguste a Paris" dating from the mid-19th Century and therefore, made many years before Bonniksen's invention of the karrusel in 1894. Antoine Redier et fils Born in Perpignan in 1817, Antoine Redier died at Melun in 1897. He was a student of Perrelet, and succeeded to Duchemin in 1850. He is recorded as having worked at the Place du Châtelet, then the Cour des Petites-écuries in 1860. In 1861, he published ?Mémoire sur les pendule conique? in Paris. The firm Redier et Cie is recorded from 1870 to 1880. In 1883, Redier became associated with his son, in St. Nicolas d?Aliermont. They regis-tered the trademark which appears on this clock.