a french brass and champlevé enamel combination desk timepiece with aneroid barometer, thermometer and compass

CIRCA 1900

Details
a french brass and champlevé enamel combination desk timepiece with aneroid barometer, thermometer and compass
circa 1900
The pillars case decorated with bands of polychrome enamel to the cornices, with conforming masks to the off-white Arabic time and barometer dials, flanking a brass centigrade thermometer register, with compass to the top, platform cylinder escapement
6½in. (16.5cm.) wide

Lot Essay

The portability of the non-mercurial aneroid barometer made it an ideal accessory for the traveller. Travel sets comprising barometer, compass and thermometer became popular around 1870 (see Edwin Banfield Barometers: Aneroid and Barographs, Baros Books 1985, p.62). It was not long before carriage clock makers added a clock and included the several instruments in one case, thereby creating an ideal instrument for the tourist: which shows the time, barometric pressure, temperature and also the direction of north.

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