M&R66

TABLE REGULATOR ‘RETOUR D’EGYPT’
Signed and numbered: LEPAUTE & FILS, Hger du Roi, 9281
Dated: 2th month/1803 (according the republican calender)
France

Movement
The spring-driven brass movement consists of going and striking trains. The going train has a pinwheel escapement with centre seconds and a compensation pendulum with a knife suspension in a ruby bowl. An U-shaped bimetallic thermometer is incorporated in the pendulum bob. The striking train, controlled by a count wheel, indicates the hours in full and the half hours with one stroke on a bell. The backplate is signed, numbered and dated Hger du Roi 9281 + 2/12.

Dial
The circular, silvered dial has a black chapter ring, which is divided into Roman hour numerals, five-minute and minute markers in a ring. The winding holes are located in the centre near the IIII and VIII. The dial is signed by the maker as follows: LE PAUTE & FILS, HGER DU ROI. The time is indicated by two blued steel Breguet hands. In addition, there is a central counterbalanced blued steel seconds hand. The dial is protected by a convex glass set in an engine-turned fire-gilt brass bezel.

Case
The mahogany-veneered and glazed case is beautifully decorated with patinated bronze statues, depicting sphinxes and allegorical images referring to the ‘retour d`Egypt’. The base of the austere case has, like the frieze, mouldings and is surmounted by a tympanum. The case rests on four gilt brass bun feet.

Duration: one month.

Height: 43 cm.
Width: 29 cm.
Depth: 18 cm.

Literature
-Tardy, Dictionnaire des Horlogers Français, p. 378.

The maker
Jean-André Lepaute was born in Thonne-la-Long, north of Verdun, in 1720. He came from a family of nine children and his father was a horse blacksmith. He made his first clock near Carignan, where he was an apprentice copper founder. In 1740, at the age of 20, he went to Paris where he entered the service of a clockmaker. Jean-André encouraged his younger brother Jean-Baptiste to come to Paris, which he did in 1747. In 1749, Jean-André was married to Nicole-Reine Etable de la Brière (born in 1723). She was a great support to Jean-André because of her knowledge of astronomy. In 1751, Jean-André presented a clock he had made, the entire mechanism of which consisted of a single wheel, to Louis XV.

In 1752, he developed a clock that indicated the hours, minutes and seconds and had a quarter-hour strike. In 1759, he was appointed ‘master’ and was invited to work in the Louvre. In 1774, Jean-André left the business to his brother. He went to live in St. Cloud, where he died in 1788, one year after his wife.