French Régence period "Pendule de Cartonnier"

A pendule de cartonnier on four tapering and fluted feet decorated with acanthus leaves. On the front the dial is integrated in the plinth and supported on both sides by C-scrolls with foliate decoration. Under the dial the case is decorated with acanthus leaves flanking a shell. The upper part shows a woman’s mask and is topped by the wings of Time and an hourglass (Tempus fugit; time flies). The underside of the clock is decorated with lavish acanthus foliage around a small pendentive.
The sides of the clock case both show a lyre with two Thyrsus rods, a winged male mask and ram’s masks within a C-scroll cartouche. This cartouche is linked to the plinth by scrolls and foliate decoration and linked to the top by shells. The top, under the hourglass and wings, shows shells and a pierced pattern of squares.

The ormolu dial bears twelve C-scroll cartouches with Roman numerals in blue on a plaque of white enamel for the hours. The minutes are shown on the outer ring with engraved Arabic numerals. The hands for both hours and minutes are of blued steel.
The ormolu circle in the middle of the dial is finely chased and decorated with a rosette pattern, shells and palmettes. A flaming torch and two trumpets are held together by a foliate wreath and flanked by winged mythical (snake-like) animals.

The movement is of three weeks duration with a verge escapement. The clock strikes every fifteen minutes on two bells, every hour on one bell.
Louis Mynuel was a clockmaker who worked with a “Privilège du Roy” which means he used to live and work with other artisans in the Louvre, where the king lodged clockmakers, furniture makers and bronze casters who worked for the court.

This is an interesting clock, very probably designed by André Charles Boulle (1642-1732) himself.
Attribution to A.C. Boulle is suggested by the use of the hourglass and wings motif. It is a motif published in the 1725-1730 “Nouveaux Deisseins de Meubles et Ouvrages de Bronze et de Marqueterie Inventés et gravés par André Charles Boulle”. This was a publication of the newest and most fashionable designs and models Boulle had recently come up with. The hourglass and wings motif shows up on Plate II of the Nouveaux Deisseins in the model of a “Petite pendule de cabinet”.

signed on the dial: Mynuel Paris