Mantel clock (pendule de chiminée)

Mantel clock (pendule de chiminée)

Paul Gudin Le Jeune

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Parisian guilds placed restrictions on the materials that could be incorporated in clockcases. However, entrepreneurs known as marchands-merciers circumvented these rules by combining parts obtained from various sources, resulting in clocks as elaborate as this one. Here, a porcelain figure group, known as The Hand Kiss, and a separate figure of a court jester are seen with rococo gilded-bronze stems bearing porcelain flowers. Peeping from the undergrowth at the twelve o’clock position is a porcelain cat with a dead bird.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mantel clock (pendule de chiminée)Mantel clock (pendule de chiminée)Mantel clock (pendule de chiminée)Mantel clock (pendule de chiminée)Mantel clock (pendule de chiminée)

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.