Wall cartouche clock Boulle style, Louis XIV. France, 19th century

Large cartouche wall clock with corbel Boulle style, Louis XIV. France, 19th century.
Wood with mercury gilt bronze applications.
Paris Mathiew Planchon-Paris machinery (1842-1921). Signed and numbered.
With its key and pendulum.
Very good preservation, although with slight flaws in the wood plate. The machinery may need to be reworked.
Measurements: 110 x 50 x 20 cm (clock); 40 x 55 x 25 cm (stand).

Excellent set of clock and Louis XIV style bracket following the models of André Charles Boulle (1642-1732), made in the nineteenth century, with the machinery signed by the famous watchmaker and automaton maker Mathieu Planchon. Thus, it is decorated with important motifs in relief and round bulge, including figurative elements, which in the case of Boulle's furniture were carved pieces in wood, here already applied bronzes more typical of the style of the time. The decoration is completely baroque, in the style of the French decorative arts of the last period of the reign of Louis XIV. This is because this period was key in the development of the decorative arts of the period of Louis XVI, as designers and artists turned their gaze to the Regency style, transition from baroque (classical) to rococo (anti-classical), in search of formulas for transition from the rococo style to the new neoclassical. Thus, we see a great importance of classicist figuration, with allegorical figures adorning the front (a group with the allegory of abundance next to a lion and a putti with the ball of the world) and the top (a winged angel with scythe topping the top), as well as fantastic figuration derived from baroque chinoiserie, an architectural structure also baroque, chromatic contrasts typical of Boulle and a profusion of motifs such as turnstones, leaves, masks and classical vases that seem directly taken from the ornamental background of the French classicist baroque.
The clock has a gilt dial with vegetal reliefs, with Roman numerals enameled in black on porcelain. The whole piece stands on a matching decorated bracket.

Mathieu Planchon was a watchmaker, inventor and automaton designer who worked between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with figures such as Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, famous illusionist of the time, who before developing his later career was also a watchmaker and automaton maker. Mathieu Planchon studied the systems of "mysterious pendulums" between 1897 and 1899, which Maurice Couet later produced for the famous pendulum clocks of the Cartier firm.