99th Auction

2019/5/11

Lot 170

Barthélémy Macé à Blois / Gaudron à Paris, 109 mm, 1150 g, circa 1650/1720
A one-handed hour striking coach clock of high quality, with alarm
Case: silver, richly florally engraved and pierced. Dial: enamel chapter ring, central turnable gilt alarm disc. Movm.: full plate movement, firegilt, chain/fusee, 3 barrels, 2 hammers, rear bell, verge escapement, four-arm iron balance, engraved and pierced balance bridge.
Two members of the Macé family of Blois - father and son - were both called Barthélémy; both were known as makers of fine timepieces. The father married in 1630 and died in 1662, he was most likely the maker of this carriage clock.
Antoine Gaudron most likely updated this clock around 1720 by adding a regulator for the balance spring and the cock.
The intricately finished balance cock is signed Gaudron à Paris. This refers to Antoine Gaudron, who was born in Blois around 1640; he eventually moved to Paris and became a master in Saint-Germain des Près in 1665. In 1698 he and his sons established a company that traded among other things in watches and clocks, jewellery, bronzes and porcelain. There are many marvellous pocket watches and table clocks by Gaudron with cases that were created by the finest ebonistes of his time such as André-Charles Boulle. Gaudron is known as one of the first makers in Paris to have built pendulum clocks. During the controversy over the equation of time, his son Pierre claimed that his father had created the first equation clock in 1688. Antoine Gaudron died in 1714, a wealthy man of excellent repute.

Sold

estimated
32.00045.000 €
Price realized
36.300 €