Important Watches
Important Watches
This lot has been withdrawn
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
L.A. Mayer Memorial Institute, Jerusalem
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.