A Hot Air Balloon Automaton Clock by Guilmet of Paris
A splendid functioning automaton clock of a hot air Balloon made by Andre Romain Phileas Guilmet of Paris
Andre Romain Phileas Guilmet !1818-1892) was a horologist famed for his' 'Mystery' and ''Industrial Automata Clocks'. He exhibited at the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle, to great acclaim.
His rangle of 'Industrial Automata ' clocks included our Hot Air Balloon, a train and a boat- all of which feature in Jules Verne's 'Around the World in 80 Days' published in Paris in 1872- and, the hero of the book, Phileas Fogg, echoed his own rather unusual Christian name!. And, following Verne's fiction, he made an Industrial Automata clocks involving Captain Nemo's submarine 'The Nautilus' from ''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'.
Parisian directories of the period record him as a 'watchmaker, clockmaker, jeweller, gilder, as well as a prominent member of the Chambre Sydnicale, the overseeing body to ensure good Parisian business practice.( Phew Simon, I had better have a lie down- all that work made me feel exhausted)
Our clock has a clock set into one side of the balloon, and rotates to display a barometer on the other.
We date it to circa 1880