Lot Essay
Jacques-François Houdin, 1783-1860, was a celebrated clockmaker who apprenticed with the great Abraham Louis Breguet. He appears to have spent a great deal of his time in collaboration with Constantin Louis Detouche (see previous lot) who, going by the evidence of the patent op. cit., seems to have been the clockmaker of this most unusual timepiece.
A very similar year-going wall regulator with an almost identical escapement is well illustrated in Präzisionspendeluhren, op. cit. however this particular example is signed on the dial Gutkaes, Dresden. The escapement was first conceived in 1839 by Auguste-Lucien Vérité, 1806-1887. Vérité improved on it again in the same year by employing four steel balls. The Houdin/Detouche escapement seems therefore to have been a variant on a most interesting escapement which was trying to out-wit the damaging effects the escapement had on the pendulum's isochronism.
As in the previous lot the present clock was part of the property inherited by the Atelier Léon Hatot when they acquired the Paul Garnier workshops.
A very similar year-going wall regulator with an almost identical escapement is well illustrated in Präzisionspendeluhren, op. cit. however this particular example is signed on the dial Gutkaes, Dresden. The escapement was first conceived in 1839 by Auguste-Lucien Vérité, 1806-1887. Vérité improved on it again in the same year by employing four steel balls. The Houdin/Detouche escapement seems therefore to have been a variant on a most interesting escapement which was trying to out-wit the damaging effects the escapement had on the pendulum's isochronism.
As in the previous lot the present clock was part of the property inherited by the Atelier Léon Hatot when they acquired the Paul Garnier workshops.