With a 7¼-inch enamel dial signed Caron A Paris, the square-plated five pillar movement with anchor escapement and silk suspension, star-cut outside count wheel striking on a bell, the drum surmounted by a female figure with a parasol above boldly cast trailing flowers and a mythical bird, the bold rococo plinth with further figures in 18th century costume.

Provenance

Archer Milton Huntington (1870–1955), one of America’s greatest philanthropists.

 

Andre Charles Caron (1697 – 1775)

 

Became Master in 1722 and clockmaker to Louis XV from 1720 – 1760. He made the very first skeleton watches and taught the profession of watchmaking to his apprentice Jean Antoine Lepine who later became his business partner and son in law. He was the father of Pierre-Augustin Caron, also a watchmaker and inventor of the double virgule escapement who would rise to prominence as a playwright ( The Marriage of Figaro), musician, diplomat, spy, publisher, financier and revolutionary under the name Beaumarchais. 

In 1762 Andre Caron retired and Lepine became a master in his own right and began to teach Abraham Louis Breguet, with whom he had a business relationship over many years. In the Breguet archives many watches are recorded as being delivered by Lepine. By1765 the workshop now known as Caron and Lepine, became master watchmaker to the Dauphin Louis-Auguste, later to become Louis XVI on the death of his grand-father in 1774. Jean-Antoine Lepine most important invention which was called the “Lepine calibre” was a means of manufacturing a pocket watch that could be much thinner and today, its basic design is what characterises all mechanical watches. To do this, it exchanged the traditional frame with two bottom plates for a single plate onto which the train is fixed with independent bridges. It also removed the fusee and its chain and then began using the cylinder escapement. He also invented the floating mainspring going barrel. 

In the Garde Meuble inventory of 1788 ten clocks by Caron and thirty-two by Lepine

are recorded. 

Measurements

Dimensions CM Inches
Width: 57 22.5
Depth: 20 8
Height: 75 29.5