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A Few Remarks Concerning Makers of Singing Bird Boxes of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries cover

A Few Remarks Concerning Makers of Singing Bird Boxes of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Chapter 6: The Rochat Family
By Georges Pélissier
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ArtHistory - European

About This Book

The text traces the mid-eighteenth-century invention and development of mechanical singing-bird boxes, explaining their distinctive automata—wings moving, beak opening, head turning—and giving criteria for identifying antiques. It profiles principal makers such as Pierre Jaquet-Droz and his son, the Bruguier family, and the Rochat family, summarizes workshop practices and familial lineages, and surveys surviving examples in royal courts, museums, and private collections. Decorative materials, technical innovations, geographic distribution including Chinese imperial ownership, and the scarcity of records for lesser artisans are described, along with notable specimens and typical ornamentation.

The Rochat Family

Pierre Rochat was born in the year 1780, he lived with his two sons Ami Napoléon Rochat and Louis Rochat, at a place called “Chez Meillau” au Brassus, Valley of the Lake of Joux, Switzerland. He devoted himself with his sons to the manufacture of Geneva music boxes and other small pieces of the same kind,—most of them hidden in various small objects, such as snuff boxes, bonbon boxes etc.

After having lost his fortune in building speculations, the Rochat family came to Geneva in 1815 and prospered again by making most curious marvels of small mechanics, which were highly appreciated by the connoisseurs and sold to the principal courts of Europe.—

Pierre Rochat had been for some time in the employ of Jaquet-Droz.—

Ami Napoléon Rochat the eldest son, made a speciality of the singing bird boxes which established the reputation of the name of Rochat all over the world.—

Silver gilt and enamel singing Bird Box by Charles Bruguier

Collection Tiffany & Co., New York

The work was absolutely perfect, especially the singing and extreme complication and smallness of the mechanism the bird opening its beak and turning its head when singing.

Louis Rochat the second son was in that line even better than his brother; he conceived and executed the most curious and complicated pieces, which have never been imitated since; for instance singing bird watches and the famous Singing bird Pistols, where a bird appeared and sang out of the barrel when pressing the trigger. A very rare specimen of such pistol is in the Bernard Frank collection in Paris, one of the most renowned collections in Paris.—

In 1829 Louis Rochat made a curious and complicated clock, for which he was awarded by a special diploma, and appointed “Companion of the Watchmakers and scientists of the city of Geneva.”—

Silver gilt and enamel Bird Box by Charles Bruguier-the-Son

Collection Tiffany & Co., New York