The caryatid figures, with their harvest of fruit serving as 'vases cassolettes', relate to that of a hunter featured in a sketch of a clock, known as the 'Negrillon Porteur' invented in 1799 by the Parisian clock-maker Jean-Simon De Verberie of the Boulevard du Temple (De Verberie's, Cahier des desseins des Pendules, is preserved in the Cabinet des Etampes at the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris). The figures were popularised by publications such as Bernardin de Saint-Pierr's romantic novel Paul and Verginie, 1787.