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A wonderful Louis XV gilt bronze cartel clock of eight day duration, signed on the white enamel dial Filon à Paris, housed in a beautiful case attributed to Antoine Zacharie Solon. The dial with outer Arabic numerals and inner Roman numerals and a very fine pair of pierced gilt brass hands for the hours and minutes. The spring driven movement with anchor escapement, silk thread suspension, striking on the hour and half hour on a single bell. The wonderful case of foliate cartouche outline surmounted by a putto personifying Astronomy, holding dividers in his left hand and seated beside a globe, flanked either side by foliage and flowers continuing down the sides, with a glazed pendulum aperture beneath the dial in front of which is a cockerel, flanked by foliate scrolls and standing on the foliate-cast terminal
Paris, date circa 1765-70
Height 69 cm.
Literature: Jean-Dominique Augarde, “Les Ouvriers du Temps”, 1996, p. 345, pl. 258, illustrating an identical clock case signed by the fondeur Antoine Zacharie Solon, the dial signed Le Brasseur à Paris. Pierre Kjellberg, “Encyclopédie de la Pendule Française du Moyen Age au XXe Siècle”, 1997, p. 104, pl. C, illustrating another cartel clock signed on the dial by Waltrin à Paris, housed in an identical case.
The Parisian clockmaker Charles-Cécile Filon was received as a maître-horloger in 1751 at which date up until 1774, he was established in rue de la Grande Truanderie. Filon, along with Louis Douthiau and Léonard Roque worked for the brilliant and innovative horloger Claude-Siméon Passemant (1702-69). One such collaboration, dated 1755 was a longcase clock with the movement executed by Filon to a design invented by Passemant, housed in a finely veneered case attributed to Antoine Foullet. This clock was owned by King Louis XV’s minister, the duc de Choiseul and recorded in 1786 as standing in his study at the Château de Chanteloup, (illustrated Augarde, ibid. p. 383, pl. 280). In addition to Solon, Filon used gilt bronze cases by Osmond.
The magnificent case can be attributed to Antoine Zacharie Solon with a strong degree of certainty since it compares very closely to an identical example, illustrated in Augarde (see above), which carries Solon’s stamp. Furthermore it appears from Augarde’s description (ibid. p. 135) that Solon’s drawing of this particular model was submitted to the guild of maître-fondeurs. In 1766 the Parisian guild set up an office of drawings to accept and register scale drawings of individual models by each master fondeur to ensure against fraud or copying by others.
The figure of the putto holding dividers and seated beside a globe represents Astronomy, one of the Seven Liberal Arts (though the infant boy has also been described as the personification of Geography). Another mantle clock case, likewise signed on the dial Filon à Paris, features a putto with globe as well as a cock, illustrated in Kjellberg, ibid. p. 244, pl. A. The cockerel on the other hand is associated with the dawn of the new day because it crows at sunrise and thus may also allude the world’s continual rotation. Cupid with a globe may symbolise love’s universality while the cockerel, renowned for its fecundity, is also associated with love’s messenger.
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