Wooden marquetry tray with musical instruments and flowering branch. Roll: length 34.5 cm Box: height 19 x 69 x 29.5 cm
This one is American but it partly exists thanks to the imagination of a Geneva clockmaker: ANTOINE FAVRE, who in 1796 had the idea of integrating a musical mechanism into a watch.
He will not find the necessary funds to develop the invention, others will take care of it, and he will die in 1828 in a quite vulnerable condition.
Very popular in the 19th century, the Geneva invention will know its industrial boom in Sainte-Croix (VD) which in 1895 will count no less than 29 factories, employing 600 people, whose production will be sold all over the world .
By the end of the century, the invention of the phonograph will accelerate the decline of its ancestor.