Live Auction 7464Un hôtel particulier du Faubourg Saint-Germain The Collection of The Marquis and Marquise de Ravenel
A LOUIS XVI ORMOLU STRIKING LION CLOCK
Lot 129

A LOUIS XVI ORMOLU STRIKING LION CLOCK

CIRCA 1770

Closed22 November 2007

Price Realised

GBP 36,500

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A LOUIS XVI ORMOLU STRIKING LION CLOCK
CIRCA 1770
The drum case with berried laurel garlands and surmounted by a swag-hung vase finial, supported by a lion with its paw resting on a sphere cast with stars, above a platform engraved with diamond patterns, the plinth with central profile medallion within a laurel swag, with flowerhead bosses to all angles, on fluted toupie feet, the white enamel Roman and Arabic dial with pierced and chased ormolu hands (minute replaced), the eight day twin barrels movement with silk suspension and countwheel strike on bell
25 in. (64 cm.) high

Specialist note

This golden clock, conceived in Louis XVI Grecian fashion, evokes lyric poetry's triumph. It displays a flowered and laurelled medallion on its stepped-altar plinth; while an enflamed urn with Apollonian laurels crown its timepiece, which is borne by a celestial sphere-guarding lion. Another version of this model is illustrated in J. Augarde, Les Ouvriers du Temps: La Pendule à Paris de Louis XVI à Napoleon Premier, Geneva, 1996, p. 54, fig. 36. A drawing for a related clock, by the Parisian bronzier François Vion and dated to around 1770 is in the Bibliothèque Doucet, Paris (H. Ottomeyer/P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, fig. 3.11.6).