Clocks · Clock
19th C. Chinese Enameled Jeweled Bronze Automaton Clock, c. 1880s
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- c. 1880s
- Historical period
- Industrial Revolution (1850 – 1900)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Clock
- Materials / technique
- bronze, enamel
- Auction house
- LiveAuctioneers auction archive
- Lot
- Item 64319286
- Credit line
- Auction lot record: lot 78, A "Royal Antiques" Private Collection Auction, Royal Antiques (2018), via LiveAuctioneers
- Catalogue title (original)
- 19th C. CHINESE ENAMELED JEWELED BRONZE AUTOMATON CLOCK (English)
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Record summary
Catalogued by LiveAuctioneers auction archive (lot Item 64319286), this is a clock, dated c. 1880s. The Atlas places it in the Industrial Revolution period (1850 – 1900) of its Clocks collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: bronze, enamel. The record is illustrated with 4 photographs.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Lot description — Royal Antiques
The Item Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwi8EavDDJ0 Monumental French Automaton Musical Jeweled Bracket Clock made for the Chinese market. Circa 1880s. Highly decorated in 24kt gold plate has white porcelain dial with black painted Roman numerals a sweep second hand and colorful jeweled bezel, the clock has three stages with nine beaded cones that spin, has three waterfalls to the sides and in front with ducks moving up and down, flowers on top rotate opposite of the flowers on clock face which rotate in separate directions, the chain movement is marked and comes with a key. Measures 38\" x 16\" x 11\" and weights approximately 60 pounds. Clock is running and striking, all automaton mechanisms are working. For a near identical example, refer to Clars Auction June 19th 2016 Lot 2401. https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/45915987_rare-and-important-chinese-automaton-bracket-clock or S&S Auction May 17th 2015 Lot 116 https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/36684447_19th-c-chinese-enameled-jeweled-bronze-automaton-clock *NOTE: The Item has appraisal from Christie's expert!
Historical context
Industrial Revolution (1850 – 1900)
American interchangeable-parts manufacture; railroad time standards; Swiss and German factory systems.
Factory production transformed the clock into an everyday object. American makers (Seth Thomas, Ansonia, Waterbury) and German factories (Junghans, Gustav Becker, Lenzkirch) sold millions of shelf, wall and alarm clocks worldwide; France produced standardised Paris movements and carriage clocks; electric time distribution began.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Precision & Scientific Horology
Atlas type guide
Astronomical, musical and automaton clocks
Astronomical clocks display more than the hour: the positions of the sun and moon in the zodiac, the phase of the moon, the calendar, sometimes the planets and eclipses. From Richard of Wallingford's and Giovanni de' Dondi's fourteenth-century clocks to the Prague Orloj and the Strasbourg cathedral clocks, they demonstrated the order of the cosmos. Renaissance makers in Augsburg and Nuremberg built celestial globe clocks and monstrance clocks as princely treasures.
Automaton and musical clocks entertained as well as informed: figures move, birds sing, organs and carillons play tunes from pinned cylinders. The eighteenth-century trade with China ('sing-songs') and Ottoman Turkey created a market for elaborate English, Swiss and French automata.
What to look for
- Subsidiary dials for moon phase, calendar, zodiac and planetary positions.
- Celestial globes or armillary spheres turned by the movement.
- Pinned cylinders, bellows and pipes or bells for music.
- Figures on cams and levers; separate trains for automaton work.
Dating clues
- Renaissance astronomical table and globe clocks: c. 1550–1650.
- English and Swiss automaton clocks for the Chinese market: c. 1760–1820.
- Picture clocks (clockwork pictures) are mostly nineteenth century.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
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