Pair of Boulle style clocks and pedestals of Napoleon III period; France, ca. 1860

Pair of Boulle style clocks and pedestals Napoleon III period. France, ca. 1860.
Bronze, tortoiseshell and brass.
Marks of use. In need of a machine overhaul. The fillet on the top of one of the bases is loose.
Measurements: 93 x 40 x 16 cm (clock); 135 x 55 x 35 cm (base).

Pair of female and male table clocks of great quality, of Napoleon III period, baroque style, made in bronze with marquetry of part and counterpart in tortoiseshell applied on red sealing wax and brass, Boulle style. Both clocks follow a typically baroque structure, with a balustraded body ending in an arch and topped by a sloping body with a lowered dome, architectural type, on which stands a bronze sculpture in round bulk, representing the Fame playing the trumpet. We can also see classical figurative motifs in the bronze basin worked in relief and chiseled below the dial, where two classical "putti" appear holding an hourglass and a torch, symbols of the passage of time widely used in nineteenth-century clocks, accompanied by a bird, also symbolic, and placed on a stepped pediment richly decorated with scallops, brackets and classical plant elements.
The clock stands on scroll-shaped legs, composed of acanthus leaves, and is decorated in its structure with fine vegetal scrolls in brass on a tortoiseshell background. Also, under the front relief we see a tondo decorated with a typically neoclassical background game, also in marquetry.
Both the front and the sides have glass windows, which allow to see the movement of the pendulum, shaped like a sun and made of bronze, again following baroque models. The upper part of the clock is also richly decorated with applied bronzes, in relief and chiseled, with a central classical mask, representing Helios, classical "trofeii" on the sides and different types of turnstones.
The dial of the clock, also made of bronze, has Roman numerals enameled in cobalt blue on the white porcelain background, chiseled base in relief with motifs of flowers, fruits and animals and baroque style hands, one of them with cut profile. It should also be noted that the back door is decorated on its inner face, with a marquetry design to match the structure.
The clocks stand on Napoleon III pedestals, with a composite column structure combining base, shaft and entablature in tortoiseshell, brass and bronze. In this way, the geometric rotundity of the volumes contrasts expressively with the irregular, asymmetrical and moving expressiveness of the plant motifs, of great beauty and elaborate workmanship.
The furniture and objects decorated with marquetry of part and counterpart were always made in pairs, in order to take advantage of the leftover material from the marquetry. Thus, a main piece of furniture was made, known as the first part, where the marquetry motifs were made in the lighter colored material (brass, in this case), thus standing out against the darker background of the second material, in this case tortoiseshell. In the second piece of furniture, or second part, it was done the other way around, taking advantage of the backgrounds cut out of the lighter material and the motifs resulting from cutting out the background in the darker material, thus inverting the chromatic scheme. Given that the darker colored material, tortoiseshell, appears here as the background, we can deduce that this would be a first part, the more valuable of the two clocks.
The cabinetmaker has taken as a model the famous cabinets made by André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732) for the court of Louis XIV, with an architectural structure and decorated entirely with grotesque marquetry in brass and tortoiseshell or ebony and ivory, and elements applied in bronze. Thus we see the motifs made in brass on the base of red tortoiseshell, in the manner of Boulle, and at the same time the motifs used by the great cabinetmaker are faithfully followed, typically baroque classicist elements, light and synthesized, with a dense design.