A Louis XVI gilt-mounted porcelain lyre clock, Dieudonné Kinable, Paris, circa 1785, with enamel calendar dial by Dubuisson

The first gilt-mounted porcelain lyre-shaped clocks were made in Sèvres in 1785 in beau bleu, turquoise, green and pink ground colors. On January 4, 1786, at the end-of-year's sales held in the King's private apartments at Versailles, Louis XVI purchased a pair of blue-ground versions of this model at a cost of 384 livres. There are records of subsequent sales of clocks of this model to various other clients, most of them selling for the lesser amount of 168 livres. 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. The clockmaker Dieudonné Kinable (died circa 1815) was one of the largest buyers of such cases from Sèvres and is known to have acquired at least nineteen of them in all four color variations. Kinable, who was established at Palais Royal no. 131, worked closely with the enamellers Joseph Coteau (1740-1801) and Etienne Gobin, known as Dubuisson (1731-1815). Like Coteau, Dubuisson was employed at Sèvres, where from 1756-9 he worked as a flower painter specializing in enamelling watchcases and clock dials. A lyre clock by Kinable fitted with an enamel dial by Dubuisson was sold Segoura, Christie's New York, October 19, 2006, lot 124. Another clock of this model formerly in the collection of Lily and Edmond J. Safra was sold Sotheby's New York, October 20-21, 2011, lot 974.