A Very Rare Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze and Glass Pendule A Cage, By François Linke

A Very Rare Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze and Glass Pendule A Cage, By François Linke, With a White Marble Base.

Linke Index no. 076'.
Linke Title:  'pendule a cage'.
Signed to the dial 'F. Linke a Paris'.
Stamped to the bronze case 'F. Linke'. 

This rare example of a clock by François Linke has twin going barrels, with a Brocot-type anchor escapement and rack strike on a bell.   

The circular convex white enamel dial signed 'F. Linke/Paris' with pierced and engraved gilt-bronze hands. The hours indicated in Roman Numerals,  the Seconds in Arabic numerals.  

The clock case is surmounted by a pierced urn flanked by griffins suspending a berried swag, the arched rectangular case with glazed panels on four sides, the front hung with tasselled drapery flanked by scrolling acanthus-sheathed and grapevine-entwined uprights ending in hoof-feet, above a winged sphinx suspending garlands, on a white marble breakfront-shaped Vitruvian scrolled plinth, put down on  foliate-cast feet.

Linke purchased the original master bronze for this important clock from the 3rd auction of the fonds de commerce of the bronzier Dernière, held in October 1903.   Designed to have either porcelain or glazed front and sides, Christopher Payne in his seminal book on Linke, notes that it is a very rare model.   Linke paid 440 francs at the sale for the master bronze and the finished clocks were offered for sale at 2,850 and 1,950 francs, depending on size.  The present model being the largest.

An example of this clock is illustrated by Christopher Payne as plate 187 in his book 'François Linke, (1855 - 1946), The Belle Époque of French Furniture'.

French, Circa 1900. 

Literature
Payne, Christopher, François Linke, (1855 - 1946), The Belle Époque of French Furniture, Antique Collectors' Club, (Woodbridge, UK), 2003; pl. 187, p. 172-3, Appendix 1 - p.342. 
 

François Linke

François Linke (1855 - 1946) was the most important Parisian cabinet maker of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and possibly the most sought after cabinet maker of his period. Today Linke is best known for the exceptionally high quality of his work, as well as his individualism and inventiveness.  All of his work has the finest, most lavish mounts, very often applied to comparatively simple carcasses.  The technical brilliance of his work and the artistic change that it represented were never to be repeated.  

Dimensions

Price on application

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

Stock number