The gilded bronze case of this table clock features the full-relief figures of two children as an allegory of summer and autumn. One of them is holding a scythe and the other a sheaf of wheat. One child is kneeling bent over another sheaf of wheat. The other child is sitting down and holding a glass in their hand and is clutching a bunch of grapes from the branch of a vine wound around the upper part of the clock face. Two doves are perched on the branch. There is a bunch of grapes at their feet. The children are on either side of the case with the clock’s face and movement. It stands on a curved base decorated with scrolls, egg-and-dart moulding, a bunch of grapes, sheaves and plant and geometric motifs. Scroll feet.

The face is in white porcelain with the hours in Roman numerals. Breguet hands in bluing metal. Two keyholes. Gilded bronze frame decorated with small palmettes.

The French movement in the Paris style has two wheel trains. The wheel train or movement with a spring drive keeps the watch running for eight days. Pallet escapement and pendulum. Hour and half-hour chiming mechanism using a countwheel and bell. No. 5204 on the back plate and a stamped seal of JAPY FRÈRES / G DE MED D’HONNEUR (Grand Medal of Honour).

The Japy Fréres clock and watchmakers company was founded in 1806 by Fréderic Japy (1749-1812)and his three sons Fritz William, Louis and Pierre. Fréderic was a trailblazer in the industrialisation not only of watches but also of movement components thanks to sequential production. He gathered together a large number of local artisan watchmakers in the factory that he opened in Beaucourt, a small town in the County of Montbéliard, where he had been born. Those workers invented machines to manufacture screws, wheels, pivots, etc. in series and perfected the firing of glaze for clock faces. The heyday of the Japy Fréres et Cie brand was under the management of the three brothers. They employed 500 workers. Productivity grew steadily. That volume of production led to a drop in prices. Even though production would continue under the third generation, the factory closed in 1900 because their offspring did not want to take it over. In 1930, there was an attempt to open it again and attract a larger market by manufacturing watches with tin cases. But sales were limited and, as was the case of most French clockmakers, World War II caused them to disappear for good.

Those clockmakers received the Grand Medal of Honour at the International Expositions in Paris in 1855 and 1867.

The Prague Museum of Decorative Arts has a French Empire style clock depicting a lady reading in a library (inventory number 16,575), signed on the movement by Japy Frères & Cie and dated to around 1810. The case is the work of French sculptor André-André Ravrio. The Palace of Ajuda in Lisbon boasts four clocks with the signature of this company on the movements. One is of the god Neptune and his court of Nereid sea nymphs and hippocampi (inventory number 356); another, also bearing the mark of the 1855 medal of honour, in bluing bronze) depicts a young man in Arab dress playing the flute (inventory number 859); the third is in a polychrome wooden case and features a spring allegory (inventory number 2051); the fourth  is a clock with an ornament set manufactured in bluing bronze for the Chinese market, as the figures are of Chinese lions supporting the branches with the clock face and movement (inventory numbers 3538, 3539 and 3538).

Amelia Aranda Huete