Lot Essay
Modelled as a working mill, flanked by an enfant meunier (miller youth) and a donkey laden with flour sacks, this charming clock is a perfect illustration of late 18th/early 19th-century novelty clocks. The prominence of the windmill is unusual - more often displayed as a subsidiary part to a rural scene such as in the relief panel to the plinth - and reflects the growing popularity of automaton in this period. A related clock is illustrated in Tardy, French Clocks the World Over, Paris, 1981, Book I, p. 297, these two windmill clocks appearing nevertheless to be rare examples of this distinctive model.