Repeater watch
Watchmaker: Julien Le Roy French
Case maker: I. T. French
Not on view
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.
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