Dog be praised

November 2020. The posting on Craigslist was interesting. I don't usually look much beyond the Monterey Bay area but I ventured a look up to the "other" bay area just north. Low and behold I saw this.

I reached out to the seller, Judith, who said the clock was her fathers and had been working fine. She didn't have a key and couldn't test it.

Hmm...

Visually the clock appeared a slightly odd pairing of marble base and metal statue but not atypical of some of the Deco clock styles that were popular in the very late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I did some research from the few photos provided in the Craigslist post. Here's one. 

Such a lovely setting. 

Ahem.

The inscription of TH. Cartier on the foot of the statue was intriguing. 

The sculptor was not that hard to track down. THomas François Cartier was born in 1879 in Marseille and died in 1943. Not wildly successful but still prodigious in output and well-regarded, Cartier had become quite well known for his sculptural renderings of animals. He does not appear to be directly related to the jewelry icons.

A moderate testing of my skills perseverance on the internet resulted in finding another example of the very same statue without the clock.

From my research it appears that an actual bronze from Cartier starts at $1K and goes up from there. I doubted the piece on this clock was an actual bronze. Judith certainly didn't know. More likely the statue was a well done spelter cast, as was very popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries in France.

COVID was raging. Kathleen and I had gotten into the habit of taking roadtrips to fend the effects of isolation. Petaluma beckoned.

You know once I start researching something like this... well it's like a fish on a hook.

We're off.

After about 3 hours of driving and heavily masked I entered Judith's humble and tiny abode. Pleasant and frank, she offered this and another clock. The "dog clock" was larger than it seemed from the photo. 

Several things spoke to me. 

Overall the clock was in fine shape. The marble base was in excellent shape.

The dog statue itself was lovely. Not quite Daisy but certainly similar. Definitely made of spelter but in very good shape with a fair bit of what I suspected was its original finish on it. I liked the statue a lot.

A quick inspection of the movement showed that it seemed quite intact. It had a maker's mark (of a sort) that I had not seen before.

I removed the bell to get a full view and that was the only maker’s mark, there on the left side of the back plate. It says:

Société Clusienne

S.C.A.P.H.

Cluses

I did not know that maker (or society) but could tell from the rest of the movement (e.g. the lovely Brocot suspension) that the movement was probably late 19th century or early 20th and it looked well built and in good shape.

At that point my best guess was that the base of this clock said early 20th century and the statue says "yeah probably the same" but the movement was harder to peg at that point. Maybe the same era? 

I love a mystery.

Judith wanted a lot for this clock. Too much really.

But she had another one.

This was definitely a spelter clock that had a few condition issues but also had...

A Japy Freres movement. 

JF was a French maker who's name should be familiar to those few fools of you who have perused my earlier missives, was a fine French clock movement maker. The shot above, taken at Judith's house, shows what appears to be the 1867 mark (scroll down a ways) from the freres. 

Judith wanted $200 for the second clock. It had several issues that I gently pointed out. One mainspring just spun. There's no pendulum. The crystal appears to be missing.

I scooped them both for a reasonable compromise, tilting more towards sympathy to Judith's modest lifestyle than my greed.

Jumping ahead to an inevitable future posting... that statue is of Diana the huntress with her dog (either Syrius or Phocion... you decide).

Oh there's much more to tell.