Repeater watch

Julien Le Roy

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Julien Le Roy, probably the most inventive clockmaker in eighteenth century France, was appointed clockmaker to Louis XV (1710–1774), an honor that allowed him a workshop in the Louvre. The movement of the watch strikes hours and quarters on the back of the case instead of on a bell. This type of repeater, called a dumb repeater, allowed the user to tell the time unobtrusively by counting the vibrations of the case. The style of the case, with its beautiful opaque-enameled flowers that seem to float on an engraved gold ground, was fashionable among Parisian makers of watchcases and gold boxes about the middle of the eighteenth century.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art