Lot Essay
Robert Robin (1742-1809), maître in 1767 and working from the Grande Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré, supplied clocks to Louis XV, Louis XVI, the Queen and the République. He published several books on clocks and their mechanisms. Antoine-Philippe Pajot (circa 1730-1781) was received maître fondeur-ciseleur July 30, 1765 by privilege of the Hôpital de la Trinité in Paris. His atelier was first located on the premises of the ébéniste, Pierre Macret, in the Grande Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and after 1766 in a house belonging to the marquise de la Bruyère in the rue Bar-du-Bec in the parish of Saint-Merry.
Thanks to the inventories drawn up on the deaths of his two wives, Marie-Thérèse Ravrio (d. 1761, aunt of the fondeur), and Henriètte Tardiff (d. 1776), we are well informed about the activities of Pajot's atelier. The first inventory shows a relatively small workshop, and the second, taken in 1777, reveals an important operation. Pajot, like Caffiéri or J.J de Saint-Germain, was primarily a ciseleur who conceived and signed his models but who had them made by colleagues elsewhere: François Virgile, Jean-Jacques Gosset and above all la veuve Forestier. François Fagard carried out most of the gilding.
Pajot's output falls into three different categories: furniture mounts (supplied notably to Adrien Delorme, Antoine Gosselin, Jean-Françios Leleu, Pierre Macret and Pierre Pioniez); bronzes d'ameublement, and mounted porcelain, glass, rock crystal and hardstones.
The inventory taken following his death, however, mentions only four clocks: one à fleurs, one à deux figures, one cartel et ses accessoires and a cartel à feuilles de chesne antique prisé 67 Livres. Another clock with a military trophy, by Pajot, is in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace (illustrated in P. Verlet, Les Bronzes Dorés Français du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1987, p. 258, fig. 285 and 286). His stock also contained a large number of wall-lights and chenets, but he seems to have specialised in glass and rock crystal as the 1777 inventory show dix sept pièces en cristal de roches destinés a former trois vases... et qui appartiennent à Monsieur Magnien marchand mercier rue Meslée qui les a confiés...pour les monter (cf. the pair sold from the Elizabeth Parke Firestone Collection II, Christie's New York, 22-23 March 1991, lot 868). Antoine Magnien was an important marchand-mercier and author of Mémoires sur le Commerce des Bronzes (Paris, 1776). His bronze foundry published accounts on 18 January 1777 showing obligations of 134, 640 livres, with Pajot being a creditor in the amount of 900 livres.
The 1777 inventory also indicates considerable work mounting porcelain. It cites three blue porcelain vases sent by the marchand-mercier Jean-Bertin Tesnier to be mounted. Two pairs of signed vases were sold anonymously, one in celadon at Sotheby's Monaco, 30 November 1986, lot 1036, and another in blue porcelain in Paris, 28 March 1990, lot 130.
Thanks to the inventories drawn up on the deaths of his two wives, Marie-Thérèse Ravrio (d. 1761, aunt of the fondeur), and Henriètte Tardiff (d. 1776), we are well informed about the activities of Pajot's atelier. The first inventory shows a relatively small workshop, and the second, taken in 1777, reveals an important operation. Pajot, like Caffiéri or J.J de Saint-Germain, was primarily a ciseleur who conceived and signed his models but who had them made by colleagues elsewhere: François Virgile, Jean-Jacques Gosset and above all la veuve Forestier. François Fagard carried out most of the gilding.
Pajot's output falls into three different categories: furniture mounts (supplied notably to Adrien Delorme, Antoine Gosselin, Jean-Françios Leleu, Pierre Macret and Pierre Pioniez); bronzes d'ameublement, and mounted porcelain, glass, rock crystal and hardstones.
The inventory taken following his death, however, mentions only four clocks: one à fleurs, one à deux figures, one cartel et ses accessoires and a cartel à feuilles de chesne antique prisé 67 Livres. Another clock with a military trophy, by Pajot, is in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace (illustrated in P. Verlet, Les Bronzes Dorés Français du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1987, p. 258, fig. 285 and 286). His stock also contained a large number of wall-lights and chenets, but he seems to have specialised in glass and rock crystal as the 1777 inventory show dix sept pièces en cristal de roches destinés a former trois vases... et qui appartiennent à Monsieur Magnien marchand mercier rue Meslée qui les a confiés...pour les monter (cf. the pair sold from the Elizabeth Parke Firestone Collection II, Christie's New York, 22-23 March 1991, lot 868). Antoine Magnien was an important marchand-mercier and author of Mémoires sur le Commerce des Bronzes (Paris, 1776). His bronze foundry published accounts on 18 January 1777 showing obligations of 134, 640 livres, with Pajot being a creditor in the amount of 900 livres.
The 1777 inventory also indicates considerable work mounting porcelain. It cites three blue porcelain vases sent by the marchand-mercier Jean-Bertin Tesnier to be mounted. Two pairs of signed vases were sold anonymously, one in celadon at Sotheby's Monaco, 30 November 1986, lot 1036, and another in blue porcelain in Paris, 28 March 1990, lot 130.