A Rare c.1865 French Gilt-Bronze Mantel Clock by Augte. Pointeaux with perpetual calendar and rare coupe perdu escapement,
A French Napoleon III gilt-bronze striking mantel regulator with a 5 inch two-piece enamel clock dial having Roman numerals for the hours, a recessed center signed Augte. Pointeaux, his rare outside coup perdu escapement and steel cut Breguet hands with a true sweep seconds.
The high quality 8-day time and strike French movement is stamped on the backplate by the ebouche maker, Pons, and the maker, ‘3. Rue Cherubini Paris No. 7163 ‘Augte Pointeaux ‘. It has an asymmetrical crutch with a screwed beat adjustment that only impulses the pendulum every other swing. There is a lock screw that sits in a hole to the side that is moved just beside the crutch when the clock is moved so the escapement is not damaged. The massive steel and zinc 5-rod grid-iron pendulum has a large gilt-bronze bob. It is suspended from an extremely high-quality Brocot like suspension mechanism and is adjusted out the front for fast/slow.
The movement features an unusual variant of the coup-perdu escapement using two independently pivoted arms—one for locking and one for impulse. The impulse arm uses a pivoted drop-pallet at its extremity and is gravity-assisted. The escapement uses six jeweled pivots.
The polychrome calendar dial sits below the clock dial and shows the date, day, month and the phase of the moon. The moon-dial in the center has rolling moons, the day dial is a jump back sector dial and the month dial shows the zodiac symbol with an indicator hand that carries a gilt sunburst. The adjustments are located on the back of the calendar works. One adjustment is for month/date and the other is for moon/day. Between the two is the 4-year perpetual indicator. The frontplate of the calendar works carries the Pointeaux stamp.
Below is the year aperture that has a 10-sided roller showing the years that is tripped each year on Jan. 1. The mechanism to trip the year over is complicated and clock specific.
The dials are framed by an elaborately engraved gilt-bronze mask. The heavy broken-arch original gilt-bronze case has friction fit doors front and back and extremely heavy beveled glasses. (CL0647
Height – 18.5 in.
E.-Louis-Auguste Pointeaux (1809-1885) is recorded working in the rue Cherubini between 1850 and 1880. He invented his own coup perdu escapement of which this clock shows an example.
Reference: Lit: Tardy, Dictionnaire des Horlogers Francais, pp 527
