Clocks · Clock
Neuchateloise Clock with Bracket, France, 18th Century
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 18th century
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- France
- Object type
- Clock
- Materials / technique
- boulle, tortoiseshell, bronze, porcelain
- Auction house
- Invaluable auction listings
- Lot
- Lot DF820F1DE4
- Credit line
- Auction lot record: lot 171, Wunderkammer & Objets de Vertu | Historical Clocks & Timepieces | An Old Masters Print Collection, Marcopolo Auctions Milano (2026), via Invaluable
- Catalogue title (original)
- ☼NEUCHATELOISE CLOCK WITH BRACKET, FRANCE, 18TH CENTURY (English)
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Record summary
Catalogued by Invaluable auction listings (lot Lot DF820F1DE4), this is a clock, made in France, dated 18th century. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Clocks collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: boulle, tortoiseshell, bronze, porcelain. 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 — Marcopolo Auctions Milano
h cm 71 x l cm 32, Wooden case in the Boulle style, in tortoiseshell and bronze, with a dial featuring Roman and Arabic numerals set within porcelain cartouches. Gilded bronze figures depicting angels’ faces adorn the ends of the case and the base. Movement with striking mechanism for the passing of the hours and half-hours, and a silk-thread pendulum.
Historical context
Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
Huygens' pendulum and balance spring transform accuracy; English makers develop the anchor and deadbeat escapements.
Huygens's pendulum (1656–57) improved clock accuracy from about a quarter of an hour to under a minute a day. The anchor escapement (c. 1670) and the long seconds pendulum created the longcase clock; London makers such as Fromanteel, Knibb, Tompion and Quare led European clockmaking, and French makers created the Boulle pendule.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Renaissance Horology
Atlas type guide
Domestic clocks
A clock combines four systems: a source of power (falling weight, coiled spring, or later electricity), a gear train that divides time, an escapement and oscillator that regulate it (foliot, pendulum or balance), and an indicating system of dial and hands or a bell. Its history runs from the large iron weight-driven clocks of the late thirteenth century to Renaissance spring-driven table clocks, the pendulum revolution of 1656, the factory clocks of the nineteenth century and electric and quartz clocks of the twentieth.
Domestic clocks also reflect regional furniture and decorative traditions — English longcase and bracket clocks, French pendules, Viennese regulators, Black Forest and American shelf clocks — and therefore record changing tastes as much as technical progress.
What to look for
- How the clock is powered: weights, spring barrel, fusee, electric coil.
- The oscillator: foliot, short pendulum, long seconds pendulum or balance.
- Whether it strikes: hour only (count wheel) or hours and quarters (rack striking).
- The maker or retailer's name on dial and movement, and any factory trademarks.
- Signs of alteration — replaced dials, converted escapements, 'married' cases.
Dating clues
- Before 1656 clocks used foliots or balances; after, most domestic clocks have pendulums.
- Anchor escapements spread after c. 1670; minute hands became common at the same time.
- Factory production in America and Germany transformed prices after c. 1840.
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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