Mantel Clock (Telleruhr), ca. 1710
Movement by Franz Xaver Gegenreiner (German, master clockmaker in 1770); Repoussé silver by Johann Andreas Thelot (German, 1655–1734)
Case: tortoiseshell veneer and silver, partly gilt; Dial: champlevé silver with black numerals; Movement: brass and steel; 31 3/4 x 17 x 11 1/4 in. (80.65 x 43.18 x 28.58 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1946 (46.162)
Movement by Franz Xaver Gegenreiner (German, master clockmaker in 1770); Repoussé silver by Johann Andreas Thelot (German, 1655–1734)
Case: tortoiseshell veneer and silver, partly gilt; Dial: champlevé silver with black numerals; Movement: brass and steel; 31 3/4 x 17 x 11 1/4 in. (80.65 x 43.18 x 28.58 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1946 (46.162)
Thelot's ancestors were French Huguenots who emigrated from Dijon in 1585. He became one of the most celebrated goldsmiths in Augsburg, a city renowned for its metalwork in silver and silver gilt. The reliefs on this case depict the goddess Venus at her toilette (top), Venus and Diana (right), Venus and Mars (bottom), and Venus at the forge of Vulcan (left). The present quarter-striking movement, with an alarm and a repeating mechanism, is the work of a competent but comparatively unknown clockmaker, and it was probably fitted to this extraordinary case at some time in the second half of the eighteenth century.
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