Jacquemart Automata | Meuron & Cia. | Repeater | Gold | 1810
Series: GRAND COMPLICATIONS
By: Sílvio Pereira
Functions
1 - Hours;
2 - Minutes;
3 - Jacquemart automata;
4 - Hour repeater;
5 - Quarter repeater.
Technical data
- Skeletonised Lépine-type pocket watch. Grand complication. Dated 1810
- Serial number: None
- Manufacture: Meuron & Cia.
- Country: Switzerland
- Calibre: Full plate (two plates). Unnumbered
- Movement protection: Gold dust cover.
- Escapement type: Verge (crown wheel)
- Balance: brass, with spiral hairspring and balance cock mounted above
- Power transmission: barrel driven through a fusee
- Power reserve: 30 hours
- Frequency: 14,400 vph
- Jewels: None
- Case material: 18 ct gold
- Dial: enamel, with no flaws or hairlines
- Small seconds: None
- Pendant: At 12 o'clock
- Case diameter: 56.3 mm
- Thickness: 22.8 mm
- Weight: 128.27 g
- The mainspring is wound with a key directly on the mechanism through an opening in the dust cover
- Hands: Breguet style. Set directly on the hand arbor through the dial, which is protected by a glass
- Numerals: Hours - Breguet type. Minutes - markers.
- Glass: In excellent condition.
- Case back number: 2952
Overall assessment - A grand complication watch, more than 210 years old, in an excellent state of preservation.
Why the name "Jacquemart"?
Monsieur Jacquemart and his wife
Jacquemart himself can be seen in the French city of Dijon. He is a middle-aged bronze man in a wide-brimmed hat, smoking a pipe. Jacquemart and his wife, also in bronze – a typical peasant woman from the outskirts of Dijon – stand on the city's tower clock, designed by the master Heinrich De Vic. This respectable family is known all over the world. The Jacquemarts carry out a simple but important job: once an hour they strike a large, loud bell with special hammers. A most original repeater. Later the couple had a baby, who became the successor to the dynasty. He was put in charge of striking the quarter hours.
In fact, Jacquemart is the surname of the master who created the famous bronze couple. But his idea was so perfect that his creation took hold and was copied by other masters. As a result, the name Jacquemart became a common noun, and clocks with bells, or carillons, all over the world acquired “relatives” of the bronze family of Dijon. The construction of such mechanisms recalls music boxes or grand pianos. The clock movement raises and lowers the special hammers at the appropriate moment. These in turn fall on a bell, making it ring. Bells of different tones were normally chosen for carillons, since the repeater produced not simple strokes but melodies. Today miniature pocket or wrist watches can do this too, but at that time the technology was rather difficult.
There was a period when these architectural ornaments were in fashion. The Dutch were especially fond of bells. Before the masters managed to make a pocket watch with jacquemarts, they tried fitting their movement into table clocks. German clockmakers actually began creating such clocks in the 17th century to surprise and entertain sophisticated connoisseurs of beautiful pieces. Automaton clocks with animals, knights and even mechanical "Madonna and Child" figures were especially popular in that period. An interesting model from those times is the “Planetarium” table clock. It consists of two mechanisms at once: one is responsible for indicating the time, the second for the relative positions of the planets of the solar system and of the celestial body itself. It is also a kind of automaton, made in accordance with all the laws of astronomy. As intended, the Earth makes one complete revolution around the Sun in 365 days, and the model of Saturn needs 29.5 years, like its prototype. But the Jacquemarts that first adorned pocket watches were still made in the image of humans.
The Jacquemart couple on the clock tower of the city of Dijon
Jacquemart
A Jacquemart (pronounced jaquemart) is an artistic automaton representing a figure carved in wood or metal, which indicates the hours by striking a bell with a hammer. The term "Jacquemart" began to appear in the 14th century.
Its etymology is uncertain; there are several, some of which are fanciful. It may be:
a personification of watchmen, called Jacks in England, who struck the hours by hand on a bell;
a possible Latin origin, through the evolution of the word "jaccomarchiadus", which designated the soldiers posted as lookouts at the top of towers;
a reference patronymic for all the locksmiths and clockmakers called Jacquemart Yolem of Lille in the 15th century, corresponding to a worker skilled in repairing the bells of a tower in Dijon, but also in Fontainebleau in the 16th century, in Laon, Besançon, Avignon, etc.;
a contraction of the proper name Jacques and the common noun mart, referring to a hammer.
metal and wooden figures representing, often rather crudely, an armed man. The latter strikes the hours with a hammer on a gong. They can also be found in children's toys made up of two characters alternately striking an anvil placed in front of them.
Various models of pocket automata with Jacquemarts
Jacquemart tower (Moulins)
The Jacquemart tower is a clock tower about thirty metres high, located in the centre of Moulins (Allier, France), so called because of the Jacquemart it carries. Built in the middle of the 15th century, it was altered and restored after several fires. It has been listed as a Historic Monument since 1929.
Above: the Jacquemart tower in Moulins
Below: detail of the Jacquemart automata in Moulins
History of the Jacquemart tower
The present tower was built between 1452 and 1455. Its appearance then did not resemble today's, as the tower has suffered two fires. Originally it looked like a spire, topped by gargoyles and an ornate cornice. At the top, it was crowned by a needle spire.
From 1451 to 1455, four consecutive consulates (town councils) devoted themselves to acquiring and building an improved clock tower, like those built in Flanders.
To that end, on 16 May 1452 a special tax was levied to help with the construction of the tower and its clock.
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At the beginning of 1453 the tower was built. It is the “ancestor” of the present Jacquemart tower.
In 1454 its timber frame was improved and, the following year, in 1455, it received its final fittings. That same year the shaft was crowned with a spire of fine Orléans slate, adorned with pennants and banners emblazoned by Jehan Chasteau.
The bell was made by Robert Bresmant. It is decorated with the arms of the Duchess of Bourbon and of the town.
At that time there was a single bell and a painted iron automaton that struck a bell with a hammer as it marked the hours. A sun and a moon were painted on the clock dial.
The fire of 1655
There was no noticeable damage for two centuries, although routine repairs were carried out periodically on the mechanism.
But on the night of 20 to 21 November 1655, a fire that started at Les Halles and spread towards the collegiate church devastated the Jacquemart. The interior of the tower was completely destroyed. Only the outer stone structure was saved. It was rebuilt the following year.
Buildings that preceded the Jacquemart tower
In 14th-century France, the building of mechanical clocks using weights
to power the mechanism became widespread. The towers, each with its own clock, were then the symbol of the freedoms won by the towns in the Middle Ages and of their development.
After the granting of the charter of franchise in 1232 and the establishment of the administration of Duke Louis I of Bourbon, Moulins developed rapidly. Around 1400, the town had two clock towers: that of Les Halles, or "Vieille Reloge", located on the market square between rue des Orfèvres and rue François Perron, and that of Geneste, or "Petite Reloge", located between rue de Berwick and rue de Paris. In 1405 the Halles tower was destroyed. The foundations of the Geneste were consolidated. A wooden belfry was added to it and, on 5 July 1405, the clock was added.
The master clockmaker of Cusset, Michelet Hardouin, made the mechanism. In September 1407 the mechanism stopped. The same clockmaker was called in to repair it. As the cost of the repair was very high, it was decided to abandon the Geneste and its mechanism and to build another tower.
In 1409, the construction of another tower was completed, probably on the site of the present one.
Jacquemart tower (Romans-sur-Isère)
It is a tower built beside the gate of the second town wall, and it was chosen to house a clock.
Jacquemart tower (Romans-sur-Isère)
Built in 1174, the Porte de l'Aumône was remodelled during the construction of the second wall. It was preserved and, in 1422, the town's consuls decided to create a monumental clock. The tower was then incorporated into the fortress of Montségur, intended to protect the canons of the collegiate church. Its inauguration took place on 2 March 1429.
The tower is 37 metres high.
The Jacquemart in Romans-sur-Isère is one of the largest of those that still exist today in almost fifty French towns.
The Jacquemart of the Romans-sur-Isère tower
It likewise entered service on 2 March 1429. Placed beside the great bell, on a pedestal set against the south face of the belfry, it is almost twice the size of a man. As it is made of wood, it deteriorated over the centuries, and for that reason it is covered with tin for better protection. It moves on a pivot, which allows the hammer it holds in its hands to reach the bell, while its head moves in the opposite direction.
Secrets of erotic pocket automata
The smaller the movement, the harder it is to make. That is why the first Jacquemarts were impressively large. In the 15th century, however, the situation changed: watchmakers gained experience and began to make pocket watches. Their decoration was changing too, influenced by fashion and by the prevailing philosophical ideas. As the first large mechanical clocks, set in towers, served the Puritans as yet another reminder of the transience of the world, they were decorated accordingly, with striking sculptures or statues of martyrs.
The first pocket watches were very luxurious. Only a member of the aristocracy could afford such expensive "toys". They could indulge any whim! It was precisely in this period that aristocrats began to fall for erotic miniatures, considered the most important topic of conversation at the time. At the turn of the 19th century, erotic pocket watches gained incredible popularity. Calvinism dominated Switzerland at that time, and such frivolous accessories naturally provoked violent disapproval. Finally, in 1817, the clergy of the different cantons agreed among themselves to put a stop to the production of such profane things.
At first, watches adorned with frivolous images were simply taken away from their owners. But many collectors, it seems, were also to be found among the clergy and judges fighting for the purity of thought of Swiss citizens – bad luck. They quickly discovered that the losses were slowly settling into their personal collections of rare pieces. So it was decided that the erotic images should be removed from the watches. If a precious piece was found, the images would be removed and the rest of the watch returned to its owner. To keep their creations safe, watchmakers resorted to cunning: the erotic images were hidden on the back of the watches, concealed by the cover, and fitted with special mechanisms – secret locks. Wristwatches cause watchmakers fewer problems – if they place the "less proper" image on the back of the watch,
Some curious incidents occurred when, several generations later, descendants discovered that the favourite pocket watch of their beloved great-grandfather had been hiding such a spectacle, for which, had it been known, he would have been punished.
Collectors tell a story about a moralistic elderly lady who recently approached a famous historian of watchmaking to ask for advice. When he met her, the old woman showed him part of her brother's inheritance. It was a watch with a repeater and jacquemarts, depicting Napoleon and Josephine in, shall we say, "the most intimate moment between the two". The historian simply told her that this rarity would be priceless at auction. But the lady demanded that the profane thing be destroyed in her presence. For several months the historian tried to make her change her mind, but neither requests nor pleas had any positive result. Heartbroken, the historian smashed the rare masterpiece of watchmaking with a hammer and, for that reason, ended up in hospital with a heart attack.
Although we have reached an age of permissiveness and nobody is surprised by frivolous images, watchmakers still create erotic watches. It is true that these models are not mass-produced; many of them exist as unique pieces. And it is not about the amusing scenes, but about the skill of the masters. Erotic wristwatches have been produced by famous makers such as Sven Andersen (Geneve), Gérald Genta, Chopard, Blancpain, Hublot, Ulysse Nardin and others.
Some erotic automaton watches, all of them sharing the feature that the most suggestive images are hidden beneath covers
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