Lot Essay
Designed in the Louis XVI 'antique' style, this unusual automaton clock case is in the manner of the Parisian marchand mercier Dominique Daguerre (d. 1796), most notable for his most important English patron George, Prince of Wales, who is recorded as employing Daguerre in 1787 to help furnish Carlton House in collaboration with his architect Henry Holland (d. 1806). The heir to Simon-Philippe Poirier's atelier, Daguerre specialised in supplying objets de luxe to the French Court and, after the Revolution in 1789, to the English nobility, including the 5th Duke of Bedford for Woburn Abbey and the Earl Spencer for Althorp House, Northamptonshire. Establishing a shop in Piccadilly, London circa 1780.
The boldly cast dragons on the present clock particularly feature on items supplied for the Chinese Drawing Room at Carlton House, notably on the chimneypiece 'tablet' (the chimneypiece then moved to the Music Room Gallery at Brighton Pavilion and now in the King's Waiting Room, Buckingham Palace). The doors to the automaton movement are applied with flowering swags and birds which correspond to ceiling designs, either by Frederick Crace or Robert Jones, perhaps for the Conservatory/Music Room or Dining Room at Brighton Pavilion. (John Morley, The Making of the Royal Pavilion Brighton, London, 1984, pp. 147-8, cat. no. 138⁄9.)
The boldly cast dragons on the present clock particularly feature on items supplied for the Chinese Drawing Room at Carlton House, notably on the chimneypiece 'tablet' (the chimneypiece then moved to the Music Room Gallery at Brighton Pavilion and now in the King's Waiting Room, Buckingham Palace). The doors to the automaton movement are applied with flowering swags and birds which correspond to ceiling designs, either by Frederick Crace or Robert Jones, perhaps for the Conservatory/Music Room or Dining Room at Brighton Pavilion. (John Morley, The Making of the Royal Pavilion Brighton, London, 1984, pp. 147-8, cat. no. 138⁄9.)