Source:
http://www.discoverclocks.com/ornate-french-clock3.html
This is sign of Japy Freres et Cie, clock and watch factory, Beaucort France. Japy Freres is the founder of the Japy industrial dynasty.
Fredric Japy 1749-1812 was a watchmaker and inventor of fixtures and machinery for the clock/watch making trade. The Japy Company held the top rank as a leading enterprise in the clock and watch making industry. Adolph Japy was very influential for the industrialized development for mass produced clocks/watches.
A foundry, machine factory, produced also hardware. Adolph Japy, knighted and member of the French Legion of Honour was for several terms the major of the city of Beaucort, held many public offices, died in Paris 1897. The Japy clock movements are regarded of best French original clock making (quoting Karl Kochmann).
Due to massive production in the 19th century, a good number of Japy Freres antique mantle clocks and French Garniture set (mantel clock and candelabra set) can be seen not only in museums but also in private houses. They are also openly available in auction and antique houses and auction sites.
History started as early as 1777 when Frederick Japy began making clocks in his factory in the region of La Franche-Compte. Soon, the lone clock-maker established the clock-making company under his name in 1806. Together with his three sons they run the first ever rough watch movement factory in France. The family supplied raw movements or “ebauche” (incomplete watch movement) to some of the France’s notable craftsmen of his time. The company also supplied ebauches to Swiss watchmakers.
This trademark was registered in 1887. If you look at it closely you can see the stylized JFC (use a little imagination).
Frederic Japy was born in 1749 in Beaumont, France in the Franche-Comte region. This area is in eastern France and has Alsace to the north, Burgundy to the west, and has a long, 143-mile border with Switzerland. Japy was long interested in the clock-making industry in the Jura Mountains, and he began his career apprenticed to a Swiss clock maker. Eventually, he moved on to work with the inventor Jean-Jacques Jeanneret-Gris. It was this latter relationship that allowed Japy to invent his own machine tools, which over the years led to the mechanization of the clock-making industry in France.
Japy established the first factory to make rough watch movements in Beaumont in 1777. By 1780 he had more than 2,000 patterns and by 1806, that number had grown to almost 13,000. In 1806 he established Japy Freres with his three sons who continued to run the business after their father's death in 1812.
Born in town of Beaucourt in France, the clock-making company Japy Freres et Cie (also known as Japy Freres) is one of the most famous collectible antique French clocks today.
