Gilded frame of copper alloy set with porcelain plaques, signed on the dial 'Passemant au Louvre'.

Barometer with an ormolu frame mounted with porcelain plaques painted at Sèvres or Vincennes, the circular dial is flanked by swags of fruit and surmounted by an oval frame containing a porcelain plaque with a seated cupid holding a bird in his left hand, his right resting on a bird cage. Below is a similar plaque with a cupid holding an arrow enclosed within rich mouldings; the instrument signed 'Passemant au Louvre'

Bequeathed by John Jones

The barometer, originally supplied by Claude-Siméon Passemant (1702-1769), Ingenieur du Roi to Louis XV, was acquired by the London collector John Jones in the 19th century. The original mercury tube was, according to Nicholas Goodison, replaced with a mechanical mechanism which relied on an evacuated chamber after 1840 when such mechanisms were first introduced.

C.-S. Passemant was educated at the College Mazarin. After training for the law which he abandoned, he was encouraged to pursue his interests in scientific instruments by the clockmaker Julian Le Roy. By 1740 he was established as as Ingenieur du Roi with premises in the Louvre. Passemant produced a wide range of instruments including telescopes, microscopes, sun-dials, surveying instruments, as well as barometers. He was in correspondence with the Royal Society, London, about a new form of quadrant in 1740. In 1755 he made a portable barometer in spiral form for use at sea. He produced the first French achromatic telescope following Dollond's ideas in 1760. In 1761 he received a pension of 1000 livres a year from Louis XV. He supplied the Academie des Sciences, the court and leading Paris salons. After his death, the business continued in his name run by his brother-in-law Olivier in partnership with Nicollet. They produced all the barometers with porcelain plaques commercialized by Daguerre. The first such was acquired by Madame du Barry in 1769 during Passemant's lifetime. Daguerre became the principle purchaser of Sèvres porcelain plaques after 1770. Daguerre is likely to have designed and have been exclusively associated with various forms of object inset with plaques of porcelain.

Information kindly provided by Anthony Turner in November 2011.



This barometer was among a large collection of furniture, porcelain, metalwork, paintings and books owned by the tailor and businessman John Jones, and kept in cramped conditions at his house at 95, Piccadilly. In his will of 4 December 1879 and in a codicil of 22 January 1880, Jones bequeathed the objects to the South Kensington Museum, and they were transferred there after his death in 1882. The Handbook to the Jones bequest, published in 1883, marvels at the value of the gift, which seems still not to have been displayed to best advantage: 'Probably a large majority of those who visit the Jones collection will be indisposed to believe ... that so limited a space as three not large galleries in the Museum can contain furniture and decorative arts worth no less than a quarter of a million of money'. Jones' principal collecting interests lay in French eighteenth-century furniture and decorative arts, of which this barometer is a splendid and rare example, as well as reflecting the late-Victorian love of rich, gilded surfaces and historical artistic styles.

This barometer, which incorporates porcelain plaques framed with ribbons and fruit and foliage in cast, gilded metal, is signed by Claude-Siméon Passemant (1702-1769). Passemant was appointed Ingénieur du Roi (Engineer to the King) in 1740, and was allocated premises for his workshop in the Louvre. The depictions of cupids which decorate the plaques are inspired by the work of the French painter François Boucher (1703-1770); the solid, detailed depiction of the winged boys suggests they date from the mid- to late 1770s or early 1780s. Nothing is known of its early provenance, but its form and decoration recall a combined barometer and thermometer, also by Claude-Siméon Passemant (1702-1769), which was supplied to Louis XV's future mistress, Madame du Barry, in December 1769 (and which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The workings of the instrument were modified after 1840, and before it was acquired by John Jones. The porcelain plaques appear to have been cut down to fit their frames. This is particularly evident in the case of the lower plaque, where details of the painting have been truncated at the edges, there is gold-painted filling in the corners and at the base of the plaque, and the plaque has a long crack running across its lower section. These alterations suggest further changes to the structure of the piece in the nineteenth century. Despite these changes, the barometer is a good example of the type of French royal style prized by nineteenth-century collectors, and indeed clocks and barometers with similar plaques and frames continued to be produced in the period 1850-1900.

1104-1882