This cartouche case, with its serpentined and flowered-festooned Roman foliage and scalloped clock-face wreathed by sunrays, is conceived in the late Louis XV picturesque manner, and is embellished with a hunting scene recalling the sun-god Apollo and moon-goddess Diana, deities of the chase. A Chinese, now lacking his sunshade is seated on its voluted pediment and draws attention to an Oriental huntsman summoning a hound, while a stag emerges from the oak foliage of its shell-encrusted bracket. The case however bears the 1740's 'crowned c' tax brand, which was introduced in March 1745 for copper-incorporated metal alloys and lasted until February 1749. Jean-Jacques Fieffe (maitre 1725, d.1770), of the rue de la veille draperie, supplied clocks to the Paris Observatory during the 1730's. One of his cartels, with dragon hunt embellishments, was formerly in the Paris collection of the 4th Marquess of Hertford (d.1870) (see P. Hughes, Clocks and Barometers in the Wallace Collection, London, 1994 pp.38 and 39); while the case of one of his clocks formerly in the Chateau de Ferrieres collection of Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild (d.1874) is attributed to the sculptor/cabinet-maker Charles Cressent (d.1768) (see C. Bremer-David, Decorative Arts of the J. Paul Getty Museum, California no. 133)