page_title: Singing bird box
section_title: Swiss makers of the first half of the 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Singing bird box / Origins and evolution from the 18th to the 21st century / Swiss makers of the first half of the 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: A Swiss solid silver and electric blue guilloché enamel singing bird box with clock to the front. The electric blue guilloche enamel on all sides and over fine engine turning. The lid of the box decorated with a painting based on the famous "The Penitent Magdalane" after Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (1701-1787), the painting hung in the Staaliche Museum in Dresden until it was destroyed in World War II. The Art Deco watch exhibits a fine clear dial. The finely decorated grille is very finely wrought. The box in the form of the earlier Bruguier boxes with canted corners and fine silver decoration around the top in a husk decoration and also around the bezel of the clock and operating lever in a conforming pattern. Made by Ramys of Geneva, Switzerland circa 1925. Fully marked on the base of the box. On sliding the operating piece, the lid opens and the full bodied bird pops through the grille &amp; begins singing. It has a moving beak, the bird turns, flaps his wings and tail and after his performance pops down through the grille &amp; the lid lowers. 4.5 inches wide by 3 inches deep and 2 inches high(11.25 cms by 7.5 cms by 5 cms). Swiss Circa 1925.
context_page_description: A singing bird box is a box, usually rectangular-shaped, which contains within a miniature automaton singing bird concealed below an oval lid and activated by means of an operating lever.
  Its origins are found in the city of Geneva and its invention in 1784/85 is attributed to Pierre Jaquet-Droz.
  The French term tabatière has also come to be used for any small decorative box resembling a snuffbox in form but not necessarily any longer used to contain snuff.
context_section_description: According to the already cited authors Alfred Chapuis & Édouard Gélis, three manufacturers were active in Geneva in 1928: F. Cattelin, Marguerat and A. Salmon. C. H. Marguerat – Manufacture d'Oiseaux Chantant, Avenue de la Gare des Eux Vives 18, Genève – is the best known of the three, though their movements are not always marked. Charles-Armand Marguerat (1887-1931) is noted for rectangular boxes with a small round timepiece mounted on two pillars above the box. The clock mechanism can be set to trigger the bird box in the same way as an alarm, or the box may be played independently. Other Marguerat's boxes are very often oval in shape, but use a conventional movement trimmed off at the corners. The movement employed is very similar to Bontems', but - as with Flajoulot - the governor for speed control is a departure and might have derived from Flajoulot's design. In general, Marguerat mechanisms were well made and particularly the enamelled cases are of very good quality for the epoch.
  Of the other two makers, in the pieces by Antoine Salmon (c. 1876 – 1951) the enamel work is often of a very good quality as well. He was originally French but had settled early on in Geneva. Very few of his bird boxes are known to be signed.
  And finally F. Cattelin, it is not really clear if he ever fabricated them, although may be possible that he was responsible for some of the perfectly made good anonymous boxes which are far from uncommon.
  Another Genevan maker was Raymy, who worked from around 1903, but such was his workshops' lack of records, advertising or prominence, that dating his products is rather speculative. He is known for his well constructed boxes, some with an oval watch and guilloché enamel. The usual stamp of OMM within a windmill frame are always seen on Raymy's movements, with the earlier ones carrying the initial L.M.G.. It is thought to be the same Swiss manufacturer for these two supposedly different brand names, because of the obvious similarities between their respective movements.
  All these firms bear in common the using of the Bontems type going-barrel movement contained inside generally beautifully crafted cases in various materials which incorporated, with relative frequency, a timepiece during the interwar period (1920s and 1930s). They are distinguished by favouring the use of the guilloché enamel technique too.
caption: An electric blue guilloché enamel case with incorporated watch. Raymy, c. 1925. The lid decorated with "The Penitent Magdalene" after a painting by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni.
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