ARSENE CRETIN, MORBIER (JURA), FRANCE. c. late 1890's.

Single train, hour and half hour strike. Cast iron flat bed design. Pinwheel escapement with Harrison style maintaining power. Time train equipped with Huygens style endless chain remontoire used to rewind the time train from the power of the strike train. (also known as a Robin remontoire). One second pendulum with wooden rod. 26"h x 29.5"w x 20"d.

The overall design of this frame and movement is typical of French tower clocks made in the Mobier (Jura) region of France. The exception is the use of the Huygens remontoire to rewind the time train, driven from the strike train. This is not strictly the way one would expect a remontoire to function, because the remontoire here is powering the time train from the third wheel down the train. Normally a train remontoire is found next to the escape wheel which is the second wheel down the train. Generally the closer to the escape wheel a remontoire can be placed the better. Here this arrangement allows the clock to have only one winding barrel for both time and strike trains. It is startling to see the strike train main weight descending during activation while seeing the main time weight ascending (the secondary weight also descending)! The clock is designed to strike the hours one the hour as well as two minutes after ward. Apparently this was a feature shared by other French domestic long case (Comtoise) clocks. Other features this clock shares with its' contemporaries are the use of Vulliami bushings, damascened strike levers and polished, tapered arbors. See Odobey, Odobey Cadet and Negre.

This arrangement was used in some French table clocks. In that instance, the strike train is powered by a regular main spring and rewinds a small Huygens remontoire for the time train. This allows the table clock to have the portability of a spring but the accuracy of a weight driven movement that was generally unavailable with the steel springs used at the time. In a tower clock one fails to see the advantage of such an arrangement. I have not observed its' use, other than from this maker, in tower clocks. See Wagner for more on remontoire.