AN EMPIRE MAHOGANY MONTH-GOING LONGCASE REGULATOR WITH YEAR CALENDAR AND EQUATION OF TIME

BACHELARD À PARIS, CIRCA 1790

Details

AN EMPIRE MAHOGANY MONTH-GOING LONGCASE REGULATOR WITH YEAR CALENDAR AND EQUATION OF TIME
bachelard à paris, circa 1790
The circular enamel dial with an outer zodiac ring with the individual signs of the zodiac painted en grisaille on a blue background within gold flower-garlanded demi-lune reserves against a dark blue star-spangled background, the fine gold-lined border wrapped with gold vine leaves separating the inner Roman and Arabic chapter ring with the outer year calendar with their months and relative number of days, the hands with blued steel counterpoised sweep centre seconds, blued steel counterpoised mean time hand, elaborately pierced and chased solar minute hand with a counterbalanced sunburst, foliate pierced and chased lyre and arrow-head hour hand, the centre pierced out to display the motionwork and calendar click-work for the gilt engraved year calendar with equation kidney wheel behind, the calendar wheel just visible at the bottom of the dial revolving against a stationary blued steel pointer, the movement with substantial rectangular plates with five back-pinned pillars, the weights falling behind the backboard with access via a rear false panel, pin-wheel escapement with adjustable steel pallets, the two-piece crutchpiece with fine adjustment, massive gridiron pendulum with nine steel and brass rods of concave rectangular section flaring outwards towards the top, the upper gridiron brass bracket engraved Bachelard à Paris, the mid-section bracket applied with a thermometer scale inscribed Elementa Suis Propriis Armia Victa with a steel and blued steel pointer, the massive bob terminating with a blued steel pointer swinging against a calibrated beat scale decorated with a blue enamel border and inner gold floral border, the scale inscribed Dégrés du Cercle, the case with convex-moulded detachable dentilled pediment, glazed sides and front door with foliate-cast convex glazed dial bezel, concave moulding to the plinth with raised rectangular panels to the front and sides
84in. (213cm.) high

Lot Essay

Bachelard is recorded in Rue Montorgeuil in an XI(1802) and working in Paris until 1817. He is also noted as a maker of Montres à Masse which leads one to believe that the present regulator was either his masterpiece or the product of another workshop; either way it is a highly accomplished work of horology. The dial is particularly eye-catching and is very probably the work of Joseph Coteau or Gobin Etienne, called Dubuisson, both of whom worked for the Sèvres factory and were the greatest dial enamelers of the period.

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