A gilt bronze mounted cobalt blue ground Sèvres style porcelain three piece clock garniture, Paris, late 19th century

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Description

gilt bronze, porcelain, enamel
clock height 19 1/4 in.; candelabra height 16 in.
49 cm; 41 cm

comprising a pair of four light candelabra and a mantel clock, the white and polychrome enamel dial inscribed Causard / Horloger du Roi / A Paris

Catalogue Note

The first lyre-shaped clocks, which can be perceived as the precursors to skeleton clocks, were made in Sèvres in 1785 in cobalt blue, turquoise, green or pink ground colors. Louis XVI purchased a blue-ground version of a similar model as the present lot.

The creator of the design for these lyre clocks is unknown, though an unattributed drawing of this model exists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated Mary L. Myers, French Architectural and Ornamental Drawings of the Eighteenth Century, 1992, p. 204, no. 121.