AN EXCEPTIONAL 19TH CENTURY GILT AND PATINATED BRONZE FIGURAL CERCLES TOURNANTS CLOCK, DENIERE, PARIS, CIRCA 1860
modelled as three patinated bronze cherubs on a rocky naturalistic base, one kneeling beside an upturned urn, raised on an ormolu shaped base with C scroll and shell decoration, the cherubs supporting a gilt bronze terrestrial globe, with two rotating enamelled dials with Roman numerals for hours, interspersed by applied gilt stars, and a narrower minute dial above with Arabic numerals, a gilt bronze snake wrapped around the base of the globe, its head indicating the correct time on the dials above, the clock movement concealed within the globe, the backplate signed 'DENIERE A PARIS 3088', the twin barrel movement striking on a bell,
80cm high x 39cm wide

PLEASE NOTE THIS LOT IS SUBJECT TO 5% IMPORT VAT ON THE HAMMER PRICE.
Provenance: From a prestigious Middle Eastern private collection.

Auction comparables:
See Sotheby's, New York, Property from the Collections of Lily and Edmond J. Safra, 3-4 Novemeber, 2005, lot 169 for a clock of identical form mounted on a marble column, the clock size is not given only the total height including the associated column.
Sotheby's, London, 6 July 2011, lot 101. Of identical form and height, the backplate also signed 'Deniere'.
Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 29th October 2008, lot 275 for a further example.

This exceptionally fine clock is after an eighteenth century model, one example of which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated, Tardy, French Clocks the World Over, Paris, 1981, p. 101.
Under the Second Empire, Denière supplied important commissions to the Mobilier de la Couronne (mainly clocks for the Tuileries), to Kisselef, the Russian Ambassador, and to Said Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt. Tardy cites the firm as being active until 1890.