Clock board with automatons, coaster, in... - Lot 174 - Giquello

Lot 174
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Estimation :
3000 - 4000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 3 864EUR
Clock board with automatons, coaster, in... - Lot 174 - Giquello
Clock board with automatons, coaster, in a rich gilded wood frame, moulded and carved. The hand-painted decoration groups together, on different planes, some fixed, others animated, railway, maritime and aerial scenes. Several automatons animate this typically Swiss landscape: the first is that of the hot-air balloon, which follows the slope of the mountain, the second the blades of the mill high on the rock, the third a ship below, which follows the fourth automaton, the small train with its carriages. A clock is fixed at the top of the castle tower on the right. The mechanism hidden behind the painting sets all the automatons and the clock in motion. Mid 19th century. (Accidents) Height 35.5 cm - Width 48 cm - Depth 11.5 cm Our clock-board appears in the reference work Les Automates, Figures Artificielles d'Hommes et d'Animaux, Histoire et Technique, Alfred Chapuis et Edmond Droz, Ed. Du Griffon, Neuchâtel, 1949, cf. p. 16 plate II, it is called Tableau mécanique (Coll. J Damiot). Automata and clockwork mechanics, an extraordinary live show, have always fascinated great men. Anatole France, in her souvenir book "Le Livre de mon ami", published in 1855, describes a clock painting from her childhood, very close to ours. Perhaps it is the one that adorned the wall of his dining room. "It is, however, very curious the dining room because of a clock painting which represents a mountain by the sea with a church, under a blue sky. And when the time struck a ship was waving on the waves, a locomotive with its carriages came out of a tunnel and a balloon rose into the air. (...) It is said that the locomotive, the ship and the balloon only left every hour and that's a long time, an hour".
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