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Blaise Bontems
A Rare Singing Bird Automaton
£60,000
A Rare Gilt-Bronze and Sèvres Style Porcelain Mounted Singing Bird Automaton, By Bontems, Paris. Stamped to the base 'Bontems, Paris'. With...
尺寸
Height: 44 cm (18 in)Diameter: 23 cm (10 in)
印刷品描述
A Rare Gilt-Bronze and Sèvres Style Porcelain Mounted Singing Bird Automaton, By Bontems, Paris.
Stamped to the base ‘Bontems, Paris’.
With going-barrel movement, whistle, and bellows.
This rare bird automaton is fitted with an exotic taxidermy bird with electric blue and emerald toned plumage, beneath a domed octagonal cage with slender fluted columns and an octagonal base fitted with fine Sèvres style rectangular porcelain plaques emblematic of the Arts and nature. The cage is fitted with a hanging ring to its crown, and a key winding mechanism which is housed in the base.
The beautiful exotic bird is perched on an orb supported by a T-Bar to the centre of the cage. When wound with the key the bird begins to sing its chorus, the beak, head, and tail feathers all moving in a naturalistic fashion to the birdsong. As with the finest Bontems examples the complicated mechanism has two cams, one for song, beak and tailfeathers, the other fr the head; allowing the singing bird’s beak to move whilst its head moves from side to side.
Bontems’ range of superb gilt-bronze automaton cages decorated with Sèvres panels, represented the haute luxe end of the firm’s production.
Advertisement of the parisian automata maker Bontems published in “Catalogue général descriptif de l’exposition. Section française” Exposition universelle de Paris 1878.
法国，约1890年。
日期
约1890年
原产地
法国
中型
Gilt-Bronze and Porcelain
签名
Stamped to the base 'Bontems, Paris'.
Blaise Bontems (1814- 1881) was enthralled by birds and their song from an early age and became one of the foremost makers of musical bird automata, famous for the realism of their song.
After an apprenticeship in Vosges, he set up on his own in 1849 in Paris, exhibiting at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. He quickly became renowned for his singing bird automata, dioramas and birds in trees and arbors that produced realistic bird songs. His automatons were referred to by the jurors at the 1851 London Exhibition as “ingenious drawing room ornaments containing automaton birds … more for adults than children …” (Bailly, 44).
He went on to exhibit with success at many of the international exhibitions of the period. A reporter at the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle described ‘the soul’ of the singing birds as a clock work mechanism, a pinned cylinder like a music box, a bellows system and whistle with a tiny piston to modulate the bird call. A further report from the 1878 exhibition notes that Bontems works not only displayed believable birdcalls, but that the wings, tails, and bodies moved in a realistic way.
After his death his son, Charles Jules took over the firm, exhibiting successfully at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900. Jules was succeeded by his sons and the business remained in the family until 1966 when Lucien Bontems died, and the company was sold to the Swiss firm Reuge.
Bibliography
Peter G. Schuhknecht, Mechanische Singvögel (Mechanical Singing Birds) for reprint of Bontems’ 1910 catalogue.
Peter G. Schuhknecht, Mechanische Singvögel (Mechanical Singing Birds) for reprint of Bontems’ 1910 catalogue.
D. Roberts, ‘Mystery, Novelty and Fantasy Clocks’, Atglen, 1999; p. 209.
Christian Bailly, ‘Automata: The Golden Age, 1848-1914’, London, Robert Hale 2003; p. 44.
Lisa, Nocks, ‘The Robot: The Life Story of a Technology’, Greenwood 2007; p. 42-43.
