December meeting

PG Tips

We are very grateful to Christopher Hurrion for this month’s lecture. First given in 1992 at the Science Museum with collaboration with Charles Allix he presented the fruits of research into the life Paul Garnier since the publication of the Allix and Bonnert book. Time and experience can only enrich our knowledge.

Image courtesy of Antique Clocks, price and identification guide

Those of us who appreciate carriage clocks owe a great debt of gratitude to Paul Garnier, who has been recognized as the founder of the Paris carriage clock industry. Born Jean-Paul Garnier in Épinal, France in November 1801, he was obliged to start working at an early age because his father died when he was only ten.  Paul (his preferred name) moved to Paris at age nineteen to work for the clockmaker Lépine and attended the clockmaking school of Antide Janvier.  About five years later he established his own business in Paris, showing great creativity and cleverness through inventions such as his version of a constant-force frictionless remontoire escapement which he incorporated in a complicated mantel regulator shown in the 1827 Paris Exhibition.  Throughout his life Garnier had wide-ranging interests, but in my lecture I will concentrate on his work as a carriage clock maker and the various clever and creative things he did in that capacity.  He was the key instigator in popularizing carriage clocks, and he did this with efficient production of attractive case designs and movements (including specifically his patented chaff-cutter escapement) while building his reputation using various versions of his signature that often included descriptive and impressive titles to distinguish and add value to his work.

 

Christopher Hurrion, a solicitor, has been interested in carriage clocks since being given a broken one nearly forty years ago, which he cleaned and set going again, more by luck than through technical knowledge. He has been legal adviser to the Antiquarian Horological Society for many years and was Master Clockmaker and President of the BHI in 2003. He is still on the Court of the Clockmakers’ Company and is currently and has been for the last seven years Chairman of the Trustees of the Clockmakers’ Museum & Educational Trust, an independent charity which is responsible for the Clockmakers’ Museum in Guildhall in the City of London.