Mystery Clocks

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin should be acknowledged as one of the most intelligent men of the nineteenth century, along with Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Edgar Poe or Thomas Edison.

The passion of this unparalleled inventor was illusionism. In 1839, aged 34, he performed the synthesis of watchmaking and magic by inventing the mystery clock. Some of them are sometimes seen in French auctions. It is a clock with a transparent dial, whose mechanism is invisible.

I discuss now a mystery clock made by Tiffany in New York. Mounted on a pedestal, a bronze woman takes over her a sphere maintaining below it a large pendulum and over it the mysterious dial. The pendulum operates a circular eight day movement.

This Watches group is the only one that could generate some headache to me, but it's so exciting! If I understand correctly, the eight day movement and the movement of the hands are uncorrelated. The tiny mysterious mechanism is placed in the hands hub and is worked without a winder by the pendulum movement transmitted via a small pivot.

The bronze woman is dressed as a Greek according to a fashion popular in 1867, so providing for our clock a date estimated precisely around that year.

This surprising piece, estimated $ 100K, will be sold at Sotheby's in New York on April 20.

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

I am pleased that this outstanding clock has achieved a very good price, well above estimates: $ 160 K inclusive.