NAWCC Bulletin
April 2004 Volume 46/2 Number 349
Table of Contents

About the Cover

The front cover presents a fine nineteenth-century French carriage clock made circa 1870 by Pierre Drocourt, an eminent and prolific carriage clockmaker. Pierre Drocourt was active and exhibiting carriage clocks in the 1860's and, according to Tardy's Dictionnaire des horlogers Francais,  was joined by his son Alfred starting in the 1870s. Alfred subsequently carried on the family name and exhibited medal-winning clocks in the 1800s and 1900s. Drocourt carriage clocks are identified by their distinguishing mark containing the letters D and C with a carriage clock between them, all surrounded by an oval outline.

This clock is numbered 16816 and is accompanied by a similarly numbered key and leather traveling box. Its finely engraved gorge case is gilt bronze with a painted and jeweled porcelain panels on the dial and two sides depicting playful children in bucolic outdoor settings. It is eight-day in duration with a platform lever escapement and strikes the hour and half-hour on a gong with an hour push-repeat button on the top of the case. The total artistic beauty of this clock presents a typical example of this maker's work, which was described by Charles Allix in his definitive book, Carriage Clocks: Their History and Development, as 'Superb carriage clocks, predominantly decorative and always attractive in appearance."

Thomas R. Wotruba