EXCEPTIONAL MUSICAL SPRING CLOCK: Claudius Du Chesne Londini Ca. 1695 England

M&R18

EXCEPTIONAL MUSICAL SPRING CLOCK
Signed: Claudius Du Chesne Londini
Circa 1695
England

Movement
The high-quality spring-driven eight-day brass movement is constructed between plates and consists of going, striking and musical trains. The going train has a verge escapement and a short pendulum. The striking train indicates the hours in full on the hour, followed by one of the 10 melodies with 24 hammers on 12 bells. There is a choice of two melodies that can be set at the top right corner of the dial turning a hand. (1 or 2). The cylinder can be replaced by one of four cylinders, which are stored in a matching wooden box. The musical train can also be activated by pulling a cord.

The cylinders play the following tunes:
1.Libulero / Menuet Anglois 2. Aire de trompet / Menuete
3. Paseple / Menuete 4. Gavotte/ A Jigg
5. Gavotte / Marche des Grenadiers de Prusse
The backplate is beautifully engraved in a decorative scroll leaf motif. The musical cylinder, bells and hammers of the musical train are situated on top of the plates.

Dial
The engraved square brass dial has a silvered chapter ring divided into Roman numerals, half-hour markers, quarter-hour divisions on the inside, and Arabic numerals for the five-minute indication and minute marks on the outside. The time is indicated by a pair of beautifully pierced blued steel hands. The three winding holes are symmetrically positioned in the matted centre. There is a date aperture below the VI on the chapter ring and above the centre is a false pendulum aperture. In the four corners of the dial are four secondary silvered rings with the following functions: top left/regulation, top right/tune selection, bottom left/days of the week, and bottom right/months of the year with the number of days in the month. The four dials each have a blued steel hand. The maker has signed the movement on the chapter ring as follows: Claudius Du Chesne Londini.

Case
The ebony veneered case has two beautiful openwork, engraved and gold-lacquered silk-backed brass sound apertures on each side. Two brass handles are attached to the case between the two sound apertures. A very beautiful gold-lacquered brass plate is placed on the dome top to decorate the case, surmounted by a beautifully shaped gold-lacquered brass vase and two small flower-shaped finials. The case rests on four gold-lacquered brass feet.

Duration: 1 week.

Height: 40 cm.
Width: 27.5 cm.
Depth: 20 cm.

Literature
– B. Loomes, Watchmakers & Clockmakers of the World, p. 227.
– R. Barder, The Georgian Bracket Clock 1714-1830, pp. 26, 39, 80, 158.
– D. Thompson, Clocks, 2004, p. 98

The maker
The revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685 caused a massive influx of Huguenot emigrants from France to England, sometimes via the Netherlands. As a Protestant country, with existing Huguenot communities, England was a natural refuge for those fleeing persecution in France. The number of Huguenots in the London area alone in 1700 was between 20,000 and 25,000. Claude Duchesne was one of those who left Paris to start a new life in London. He became a Free Brother of the Clockmakers’ Company in 1693 and married Elizabeth Bossu in Stepney in the same year. They had five children. They lived at Long Acre in the parish of St Anne’s, Soho. Duchesne died around 1730.

Note
Duchesne signed his clocks ‘Claude’ or ‘Claudius’ and ‘Duchesne’ or ‘Du Chesne’. The exact location of his shop is doubtful; most clock books mention the location of ‘Dean Street, Soho’ or ‘Long Acre’, so it seems likely that he worked in Soho.
Claude Duchesne is respected and known for making complicated musical clocks; two silver-decorated ebony musical clocks with interchangeable cylinders are in Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen. He took on Richard Bullock, among others, as an apprentice in 1715. The prolific Duchesne family was established simultaneously in the great clockmaking centres of London, Paris, Amsterdam and Geneva. An account by Jane Squire in 1731 states that she ‘understood that he had made the musical part of most of the musical clocks of importance in the city’. Duchesne distinguished himself from other makers of the time by using interchangeable music cylinders.