CARTEL SUR GAINE LE CARTEL in brown tortoiseshell... Lot 56

CARTEL SUR GAINE LE CARTEL in brown tortoiseshell and brass marquetry, adorned with chased and gilded bronzes decorated with feminine masks. The glass door reveals a dial with Roman numerals in twelve enamelled pieces. It is summoned to the damping of an allegorical figure of Chronos. It rests on four legs, and the back door is decorated with a Berain-style décor of canopies, drapes and mantling. Movement signed on the front and back Gaudron A Paris Inventory number in white chalk 341 Louis XIV Period Scales and missing scales, the scythe of the subject in bronze H. 95, 5 cm, W. 37 cm, D. 21 cm Gaudron A Paris: Signature used from the 1660s until 1728 by the workshop of Antoine I Gaudron (1640-1714), then by that of his sons Pierre Antoine II Gaudron (see the catalogue). Jean Dominique Augarde Les ouvriers du temps p. 319) THE GAINE in marquetry known as Boulle in the first part, with engraved and blackened brass fillets on a brown tortoise shell, blackened fir tree, encircled with ebony, brass and ormolu rods. Rectangular in shape tapering progressively towards the blackened pine ogive skirting boards. Remarkable decoration of foliated scrolls with scrolls and geometrical checkerboard. The top of the sheath is inlaid with a panel, presenting a frame composed in its middle of two pairs of scrolls of acanthus leaves facing each other that develop into a Y shape, the whole encircled by a brass frame and an ebony fillet. Above, a concave chamfer receives a foliated brass marquetry, underlined by a gilded bronze moulding with a central channel chiselled to the mat forming a semi-circle enclosing a scallop, framed at the four corners with acanthus leaves, all in gilded bronze. The central panel is bordered by a large brass plate and a frieze of acanthus leaves in gilt bronze. It is inlaid with three large cartouches in which a marquetry of acanthus leaves develops. Ornamented with chiseled and gilt bronze scraps in the shape of acanthus leaves and shells, the base in ap