Louis XVI gilt bronze and Sèvres porcelain skeletonised lyre clock

A superb Louis XVI gilt bronze and Sèvres porcelain skeletonised lyre clock, with exceptionally fine enamel dial.
Signed by the clockmaker Gavelle Le Jeune à Paris. The dial with outer Arabic numerals for the minutes and hours. With a very fine pair of pierced lyre shaped gilt brass hands for the hours and minutes and a fine blued steel hand for sweep centre seconds. The skeletonised centre revealing the spring driven movement, with pin-wheel escapement, knife edge suspension and fine beat adjustment, with spring driven strike, striking on the hour and half hour on a single bell. With free-swinging dial acting as the clock's pendulum within a beaded floral and foliate lyre shaped frame, the top crowned by a pair of eagle heads with floral and fruiting swags surmounted by a bouquet of flowers, on an oval waisted blue Sèvres base with pearled bands, the panelled plinth with applied fruiting laurel bands.

Paris, date circa 1780-85
Height 60cm, width 25cm, depth 14cm.

Literature: Hans Ottomeyer and Peter Pröschel, "Vergoldete Bronzen", 1986, p. 252, pl. 4.6.25, illustrating a similar lyre clock with movement by Manière à Paris, at Château de Versailles; the latter is also surmounted by a pair of eagles and similar bouquet of flowers and likewise has an open skeletonised centre dial. Tardy "Les Plus Belles Pendules Françaises", 1994, p. 83, illusstrating two very similar clocks, one with movement by Louis-Michel Harel, in the Musée des des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Pierre Kjellberg, "Encyclopédie de la Pendule Française du Moyen Age au XXe Siècle", 1997, p. 225, illustrating another similar lyre clock, with movement by
Gaston Jolly, with a less elaborate dial.

Cleaned and restored condition.