A fine French porcelain panel inset silvered and gilt brass grande-sonnerie striking carriage clock with push-button repeat and alarm Retailed by Tiffany and Company with panels by Lucien Simonnet, Paris late 19th century The eight-day two train movement ting-tang striking the quarters on a graduated pair of gongs and sounding the hour every quarter hour on the larger of the two, with fine engine-turned silvered platform lever escapement, alarm sounding on the smaller gong and stamped with serial number 2951 to the lower left hand corner of the backplate, the rectangular porcelain dial with elaborate raised gilt bordered Roman numeral cartouche hour numerals around a centre painted with pair of lovebirds tending a nest and signed TIFFANY & Co., PARIS, the lower margin with subsidiary alarm setting dial within painted Lakeland scene with castle monogrammed LS. to left hand corner, with blued steel hands and canted brass fillet surround, the bevel-glazed case with hinged tied acanthus leaf cast handle over generous top glass, complex mouldings, panelled frieze and fluted gilt corner columns with scroll capitals and leafy baluster waists, the sides finely painted in polychrome and raised gilt with three-quarter length portraits of young female courtiers in Renaissance style dress each signed L. Simonnet to lower right, the skirt base with projecting angles incorporating fluted panels flanking stylised baton over shaped apron to front and squab feet, the underside with Grande Sonnerie/Silence/Petite Sonnerie selection lever, 18.5cm (7.25ins) high excluding handle. Provenance: The beneficiary of the Estate of a private collector, East Midlands. The work of Lucien Simonnet (1849-1926) is discussed by Larry L. Fabian in his article Carriage Clock Porcelain. Artistic pedigrees hiding in plain view published in ANTIQUARIAN HOROLOGY December 2019 (pages 501-13). Simonnet was a Sevres trained painter of porcelain who appeared to specialise in producing the finest figural panels often based on works by well-known artists of the period. Fabian highlights three examples with three-quarter portrait panels after Emile Vernet-Lecomte and Charles Louis Muller executed in the romantic historic Middle-Eastern 'Orientalist' style. The current lot draws inspiration from the European Renaissance, again romanticised, and notably the panels are housed in a case which compliments them by drawing inspiration from Renaissance architecture. Of the three examples described by Fabian two are signed for Tiffany. This coupled with the fact that the current lot is also signed for Tiffany would suggest that the prestigious firm of New York retailers were one of the primary stockists of such clocks. Indeed the highly sophisticated and fashionable appearance coupled with their exceptional quality is worthy of such a retail environment and are highly typical of fin de siecle exuberance. The fact that the movement of the current lot is unsigned is apparently not unusual; indeed all three examples highlighted by L. Fabian also have unsigned movements. Despite this the mechanism is of the finest quality equal to that of Drocourt, Margain or Henry Jacot incorporating a particularly fine engine-turned platform lever escapement with split bi-metallic balance, and is of the highest specification having grande-sonnerie striking.