François Linke (1855-1946)

gilt bronze, glass, white marble, enamel

signed to the dial 'F.Linke a Paris' and stamped 'F.Linke' to the case

Linke Index no. 076

Please note that this piece currently located in Hong Kong

This model is an abundant example of the imagination and eclecticism of the Belle Epoque, brought together by Linke in a model that is one of his rarest and most successful clock designs.

Linke’s design can be considered more of a collaboration of sorts, since the mould for the gilt-bronze sections (called the ‘master bronze’) was bought from an auction of the assets of a significant bronze foundry called Maison Denière. This foundry was first founded in 1813 and produced high-quality metalwork for clocks, chandeliers and sculptures, including for royal commissions for Charles X and Napoleon III. When the foundry closed down, Linke used the opportunity to acquire some of the master bronzes that he could use to enrich his own range of fine luxury furniture and clocks with some new design elements.

This sumptuous design could be made with a glass or porcelain body, and the description “à cage” refers to the enclosing of these unbacked glass or porcelain panels within rims of gilt bronze that form a box-like structure. The model remains anchored in the decorative style of the pre-Revolutionary Louis XVI era, but infuses this with abundant playful motifs from a variety of sources.

In French decorative arts, the sun motif as seen on this clock’s pendulum always holds an association with the great king Louis XIV (1638-1715), who presided over a period of economic and artistic flourishing in France often called le grand siècle (the great century) and prominently used this symbol in depicting himself as the enlightened, optimistic ‘Sun King’. The eagles that surmount the clock, holding festoons from their beaks, are much more Napoleonic: the Empire style, used by Napoleon to cement and legitimise his power after the violence of the French Revolution, consciously used the eagle as one of its recurrent symbols of majesty and greatness. On the other hand, the curled tendrils of the scrolls that flank the clock are treated slightly differently from any of the preceding historical style: their delicate fluidity seems to reference the newest artistic fashion around this time known as Art Nouveau, with tendrils of this style visible on the likes of the famous metro station entrances by Hector Guimard in Paris. The tasselled curtain recalls the drapery that is often presence in the backgrounds of portraits by the Italian Old Masters, but equally draws on the love of theatre and spectacle during the Belle Epoque.

The joy of this clock’s design is the interplay of decorative motifs from a variety of sources, unified through the common use of gilt bronze and artfully arranged to produce a playful whole.

François Linke (1855-1946) was the foremost furnituremaker of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, blending an originality of design with a remarkably high quality of craftsmanship across all of his pieces. His era, often called the Belle Epoque, was one that had experienced rapid social and economic change, and perhaps because of this, was highly enamoured of the furniture and art produced during the elegant century before the seismic shift of the French Revolution in 1789. Linke, like numerous other luxury furniture makers of the Belle Epoque, shrewdly met this demand by creating wonderfully fine pieces that were clearly in historical styles, but were creative with these conventions to make pieces that were often more fresh and exciting than antiques pieces themselves. Linke was born Bohemia and travelled across Central Europe before moving to Paris in 1875, where his workshops were documented as early as 1881; he supplied to many of the top clients and patrons of the day, and he was awarded with a gold medal in recognition of his ambitious stand of exceptional pieces of furniture at the Paris Exhibition in 1900.