A Parisian ormolu-mounted pendulum clock
Brass-inlaid tortoiseshell, ormolu mountings, glazing, enamel cartouche dial with blued steel hands. The square movement converted to verge escapement with thread suspension of the (defective) pendulum and half-hourly striking on a bell. Comprised of a wall clock, bracket and finial decorated in "première partie" Boulle style marquetry with numerous gilt bronze appliques including harpies above the scroll feet, a lady sitting with a book and a stork to the front, female mascarons, caryatids and figures of children and a ram at the crown. The dial engraved "Pia Paris". With older restorations to the marquetry. H c. 125, W 46, D 24.5 cm.
Early 18th C.
These fully sculptured putti can also be found on a grandfather clock by Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672 - 1742), housed today in the Saint Petersburg State Hermitage Collection (inv. no. 34673), which was published in the André Charles Boulle 2009 catalogue (p. 349). André Charles Boulle used the motif of female mascarons above scrolls several times, including on the desks for the Princes of Condé as well as the desk for Mademoiselle de Choiseul (cat. André Charles Boulle, loc. cit., p. 236 ff).
Literature
For more on this maker see Tardy, Dictionnaire des horlogers français, Paris 3/1972, p. 518: the signature found on "une montre et un mouvement carré, début XVIIIe" (presumably this example).
For the bracket cf. cat. André Charles Boulle 1642 - 1732. Ein neuer Stil für Europa, Paris 2009, no. 8.
This model pub. in Kjellberg, Encyclopédie de la pendule française du Moyen Age au XXe siècle, Paris 1997, p. 46. Pierre Kjellberg mentions a further example in the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte.