Pendulum To Ask By Watercress, Ft De Bronzes. Paris, 1850

Lovely pendulum to pose composed of a pedestal in white statuary marble with architectural shapes set with nicely chiseled gilded bronze on a mat or guilloché background of frames, channels, beaded friezes (oves, cabochons) or foliage (grained laurel torus), acanthus florets and campanula falls. Scalloped base with undulating decoration of anthems, palmettes, windings and volutes of acanthus leaves inspired by the "Assagi Rocaille" from the Louis XV period. This main body is surmounted by a laughing group executed in bronze with brown petine featuring, on a small rocky eminence, two childish figures: with a mischievous gesture, a little boy sports a branch of lily of the valley in front of a little girl's face. -symbol of Attachment- that smiling, she pretends to decline. Interpretation of a perennial allegorical subject - "Love seducing Innocence" -, this ingenuous "fantasy composition" echoes "L'Enfant et l'Amour", a comedy created in 1847 by Bayard for the Theater des Variétés located Boulevard Montmartre, not far from the store established in 1813 "1 Passage des Panoramas, at the corner of Boulevard Montmartre" by the Manufacturer and publisher of Cresson art bronzes, signatory of this timepiece. Hemmed with a frieze of hearts, the circular white enamelled dial, signed: "CRESSON / Boule (varrd) Montmartre 9", indicates the hours in blue painted Roman numerals. The movement numbered: "711" is stamped with: "Cresson / A Paris" (manufacturer of bronzes); "Rodier / A Paris" (Doreur and chaser active between 1839-1850 in Paris, 19, rue Charlot) and "Japy Frères / Médaille d'or" (watchmaker) -, a pledge of the originality of design as well as of the care taken to the execution of this pleasant free-standing pendulum that can be placed among the watchmaking achievements of the Regency Spirit characteristic of the beginnings of the Second Empire - a cheerful period during which the conviviality, the pleasures of existence were placed under the auspices of Eros.