Important Watches
Important Watches
A VARICOLOURED GOLD AND ENAMEL AUTOMATON, GENEVA, EARLY 19TH CENTURY, THE SILVER-GILT CASE WEIR & SONS, DUBLIN, 1874
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Lot Details
Description
A VARICOLOURED GOLD AND ENAMEL AUTOMATON, GENEVA, EARLY 19TH CENTURY, THE SILVER-GILT CASE WEIR & SONS, DUBLIN, 1874
the forest scene with chased gold figures performing twelve different actions: to the left are two woodcutters, one cutting a trembling tree branch, another chopping wood, a rider spurs on his donkey which lowers its head to drink from a slowly-moving stream where ducks bob near a waterfall which turns the wheel of a watermill, while a shepherdess milks a goat, its companion nibbling leaves from a tree, accompanied by three different tunes played on five bells, apparently unmarked, signed 'Billiet' on the reverse of the automated scene, contained within a later glass-topped cut-cornered rectangular silver-gilt box, Weir & Sons, Dublin, 1874, fully hallmarked
8.9cm., 3½in. wide
(2)
The Sir David Salomons Collection, cat. no. 188
Vera Bryce Salomons
L.A. Mayer Memorial Institute, Jerusalem, inventory no. BO 10-70
Alfred Chapuis & Edouard Gélis, Le Monde des Automates. Paris, 1928, vol.ii, p. 65, illustrated and mentioned as belonging to Sir David Salomons; George Daniels & Ohannes Markarian, Watches and Clocks in the Sir David Salomons Collection, 1980, no. 188, pp.310-311
The complexity of this movement is described in minute detail by Alfred Chapuis, op. cit., p. 65. It is astonishing that so many actions could take place in such a small environment, making this automated scene one of the most complicated ones recorded at this date.
Founded in 1869 by Thomas Weir, the silversmiths and retailers Weir & Sons still exist as a family business in Dublin until today.