A LOUIS XV ORMOLU-MOUNTED ROSEWOOD AND TULIPWOOD MONTH-GOING REGULATOR WITH YEAR CALENDAR AND EQUATION OF TIME

JEAN-ANDRÉ LEPAUTE, CIRCA 1775

Details

A LOUIS XV ORMOLU-MOUNTED ROSEWOOD AND TULIPWOOD MONTH-GOING REGULATOR WITH YEAR CALENDAR AND EQUATION OF TIME
jean-andré lepaute, circa 1775
The 10½in. glass dial back-painted with Roman and Arabic chapters with elaborately pierced and chased hour and minute hands, the central revolving glass chapter disc with back-painted Arabic minute chapters and inscribed Tems vrai indicating solar time against the inner Arabic minute ring of the stationary mean time dial, counterpoised blued steel sweep seconds hand, the main dial signed Lepaute beneath XII with silvered engraved year calendar aperture below with the months and their relevant days, the kidney equation wheel behind operating on a cantilever rack system employing a steel leaf return-spring, the going train with narrow rectangular plates and with endless rope wind, pin wheel escapement with fine adjustment to the crutchpiece for the gridiron pendulum with nine steel and brass rods terminating in a large brass-faced bob with unusual calibration nut, the lyre-form case surmounted by a cast bearded mask issuing foliage and berried husks, the front door and sides Chevron-veneered in tulipwood with a rosewood border and mounted with a ribbon-tied husk chain, the lenticle framed with confronting molded C-scrolls surmounted with a scientific trophy on a concave moulded base with cast foliate and berried-wreath mounts and on a bow-fronted plinth
82¼in. (209cm.) high

Lot Essay

Jean-André Lepaute, 1720-1789, and his brother Jean-Baptiste, 1727-1802, were the original founders of a dynasty of Parisian clockmakers who all made an enormous contribution to French horology.
The sons of a blacksmith it was Jean-André who first broke the parental bonds and set up the first workshop in Paris in 1740. Like other brilliant clockmakers he quickly impressed the academia and made important contacts that were to shape his prosperous life. To this end his marriage was his greatest coup in that he married in 1761 Nicole Reine Etable de la Brière who was considered at the time one of the country's great academics, a most unusual accolade for a woman at that time!
The two brothers wisely took their nephews Pierre Henry and Pierre Bazile into apprenticeship thereby ensuring the company's prosperity. The company made the Paris City Hall clock which had equation of time and showed day-by-day the sun's return to the meridian.

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