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

JEAN ANDRÉ LEPAUTE, CIRCA 1760

Details

A LOUIS XV ORMOLU-MOUNTED ROSEWOOD AND TULIPWOOD MONTH-GOING REGULATOR WITH YEAR CALENDAR AND EQUATION OF TIME
jean andré lepaute, circa 1760
the circular reverse-painted glass dial with Roman and Arabic chapters with elaborately pierced and chased hour and minute hands, central revolving chapter disc with back-painted Arabic minute chapters inscribed Tems Vrai indicating solar time agianst the inner Arabic mean time ring, counterpoised sweep centre seconds hand, the main dial signed Lepaute beneath XII with the silvered year calendar ring below engraved 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, Lepaute's pin wheel escapement with fine adjustment to the crutchpiece to the pendulum with nine steel and brass rods terminating with a large brass-faced bob, the lyre-form case surmounted by a cast apollo mask issuing trailing foliage and husk chain pendants, the front door and sides chevron-veneered in tulip wood with a rosewood border, the lenticle framed with cast C-scroll mounts surmounted by a scientific trophy over a concave-moulded base with foliate and berried leaf ormolu mounts 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 broke the parental bonds first 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 the 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