$182,000
Important Gold and Enamel Signed Singing Bird Box by Jaquet-Droz & Leschot, London, circa 1785, the bird with iridescent blue, green and red plumage, moving bone beak, wings, and tail, the swiveling perch chased to simulate a golden bough in floriate-engraved "garden" or grille with scalloped edge and bird-shaped recess, with gilt-brass chain-drive fusee movement, turned pillars, circular bellows, polished steel stop-work, brass wheelwork, steel pinions, two-blade fan, and stack of eight cams operating four automaton movements and complex four-part bird song, in deep-blue guilloche enameled gold case with right-side winding aperture, and sliding lock for lid, hinged snuff compartment in base, two-tier seed pearl-set lid opening to reveal foliate-pierced and engraved gold mask signed in ellipses on each side Jaq. t Droz & Leschot, London , and oval enameled outer lid depicting pensive girl with clasped hands mourning the death of her white dove beside its empty cage, wd. 3 1/2 x ht. 1 /38 x dp. 2 1/8 in. Note: Readily accessible biographical information on Jaquet-Droz can be found in Arthur W.J.G. Ord-Hume, The Musical Clock , page 302. A nearly identical example is found in Alfred Chapuis and Edmond Droz, Automata , pl. V, opposite pg. 80 and pp. 195-196. Another box and additional biographical information is found in George Daniels & Ohannes Markarian's Watches & Clocks in the Sir David Salomons Collection , pps. 278, 279, and 283. The depiction of the forlorn girl with cl Read more…
Auctioneer:
Skinner
Date:
2007-10-28
