An extremely rare, museum-quality artifact of horology from one of its absolute masters: an antique carriage clock by the court clockmaker Jean Romilly, circa 1760.
Jean Romilly was a French master watchmaker and court watchmaker to the French royal family. Every surviving artifact of his represents a piece of watchmaking history.
Original works by Jean Romilly can be seen in the world's most important museums: the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Palace of Versailles.
Solid, round brass case, case diameter a substantial 10.5cm, height with crown 15.5cm, weighing approximately 700g.
Best-preserved dial made of fine white enamel with blackened Roman numerals, continuous railway minute track, gold Breguet-style hands
Gilt full-plate movement with finely crafted balance bridge, movement marked and signed "Romilly à Paris"
The spindle mechanism of the museum artifact starts up and runs continuously (accuracy not checked)
A unique artifact of watchmaking history, the likes of which probably only come onto the market once a decade, and fully signed and in working order.
EZ: 1 - 2 : excellent condition for its age with barely noticeable signs of age or use, starts and runs smoothly.
Life and work
Jean Romilly was born in Geneva, the son of watchmaker Pierre Romilly (1681–1717) and his wife Jacqueline Balexert (1691–1735). born. They married on April 15, 1707. Besides Jean, the couple had three other sons: Jean-Jérémie, Louis, and Jean-Louis Romilly. The family originally came from Gien in France, which they had to leave due to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes .
Jean Romilly first worked in the family business of his father, his uncle and his three brothers. In 1734, he left Geneva and went to Paris, where he lived on the Place Dauphine. There, in 1738, Jean Romilly married Elisabeth Andrienne Joly (born 1711). The couple had two children: a son, Jean-Edme Romilly , and a daughter, Jeanne Romilly (1743–1814). He passed his master watchmaker's examination in 1752.
Romilly authored several technical books on watchmaking. He was personally acquainted with Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert and contributed approximately twelve articles to theEncyclopédie , covering the technical and craft aspects of watchmaking. In 1754, he submitted a treatise on clock escapements to the Académie des sciences in Paris. He also maintained a lifelong relationship with his friend Jean-Jacques Rousseau .
Besides watchmaking, Jean Romilly also studied meteorology . Around 1766, at roughly the same time as Pierre Le Roy and Jean-Pierre Tavernier (1714–1795), he is said to have presented a marine chronometer to the Académie des sciences . However, this chronometer was damaged during testing on land, forcing Jean Romilly to withdraw it from the competition.
In 1777, he and his son-in-law Guillaume Ollivier de Corancez (1780–1816) founded the Journal de Paris , the first French daily newspaper, which was considered the organ of the enlightened bourgeoisie.
The watchmaker Jacques-Frédéric Houriet (1748–1830) worked for a short period around 1760 at Romilly.
