The Private Collection of Theodor Beyer

Hotel Baur Au Lac, Zurich, Nov 16, 2003

LOT 156

Pendule à trois roues. Breguet et Fils, No. 1500, number 1 of a series of 10 made by the workshop of the Musée International d'Horlogerie of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1986, in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the invention of Breguet's three-wheel clock. Exceptional and elegant marble and gilt brass eight day going weight-driven three-wheel skeleton table regulator with equation of time, Republican and Gregorian annual calendars and thermometer. Accompanied by glass dome.

CHF 80,000 - 100,000

EUR 52,000 - 65,000 / USD 60,000 - 74,000

Sold: CHF 80,500

C. Black marble rectangular base with canted corners, applied with gilt brass initial "B", gilt brass frame, the front bar engraved with the days of the week, back bar with spring-loaded bracket securing pendulum when moving the clock, gilt brass bun feet. D. Revolving large center silvered brass ring divided 2 times for 12 hours, with Arabic hour numerals, outer two-minute divisions with 10 minute Arabic markers, mean time indicated by a blued steel pointer at 9 o'clock, solar time indicated by gilt "sun" pointer, small 10-minute silver sector on the front bar with 3-arm pointers for minute indications, seconds indicated by a silver ring attached directly to the escape wheel. Below annual calendar ring engraved on the outside for the Gregorian calendar and inside for the Republican calendar. Date indicator by a cord for the plumb bob. The days of the week are indicated by the upper edge of the weights against the day names on the front bar. Celsius silver thermometer sector mounted on the suspension bar with blued steel hand. M. 3-wheel train (300, 180/6, 60/6) driven by two weights suspended on a fusee-like chain wound on the main wheel arbor via two pulleys, equipped with Harrison's maintaining power, pin-wheel escapement with teeth on one side of the escape wheel, recoil prevention fly mounted on the escape wheel arbor, knife-edge combined with jeweled needle-point suspension, unusual half-seconds gridiron pendulum with single steel rod and double gilt brass rods, rough adjustment on the rod, fine micrometric adjustment by the vase-shaped counter-weight mounted on the bimetallic com- compensation bar, bimetallic rod for the thermometer with calibration by sliding the vase-shaped counterweight, equation cam mounted on the annular wheel arbor with 3-lever transmission to the indications on the dial via adjustable plumb bob cord.Signed Breguet at the base, back fitted with a plaque from the Musée International d'Horlogerie.Dim. Height 60 cm, width of the base 31 cm.


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Grading System
Grade:
Case: 2

Very good
Movement: 2

Very good
Dial: 2-01

Very good

HANDS Original

Notes

Three-wheel clocks are among the most extraordinary clocks made by Breguet. The records of the House of Breguet list only ten of them during a period of over 40 years. The first one was bought by Breguet himself and given as a present to Laplace, the last one was kept by the Breguet family.Breguet conceived of the idea for the three-wheel clock in July 1787. He deposited the design, in a sealed envelope No. 267, at the Académie Royale des Sciences on February 3, 1788. On December 5, 1881 the envelope was opened at the request of Louis Breguet.The idea of making a clock mechanism with a small number of wheels developed around 1750. In 1751 Lepaute presented a single-wheel clock of his invention to Louis XV. Other watchmakers tried with varying degrees of success. Breguet, however, was the only one able to make a true regulator based on a three-wheel mechanism, which could run for a week. A few clocks have been executed based on one of the surviving examples, with the permission of the House of Breguet. These were made first by George Daniels for the Maison Breguet and then by the Musée International d'Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The museum made only ten examples based on Breguet's No. 3583.The clock is remarkable from both an esthetic and a technical point of view. Breguet's characteristic elegance is matched by a simple yet ingenious mechanism. The escapement is delicate but robust and efficient to the point that Breguet installed a special anti-recoil fly on the escape wheel: with each "tick" the escape wheel pin, hitting against a pallet, bounces back slightly. Breguet realized that a friction-fit mass on the escape wheel arbor would tend to drag the escape wheel forward during recoil, thus decreasing recoil. The solution of the equation mechanism by means of just three levers is simple and reliable.The micrometric adjustment to the period of the pendulum with a vase-shaped counterweight and calibrated counter-nut is equally distinctive, particularly since the same weight calibrates the thermometer.Georges Anquetin, one of the foremost watchmakers of the end of the 19th century, wrote about the clock in the December 1891 issue of the Journal Suisse d'Horlogerie: "This work is possibly the highest expression of the author's talent. This assertion is corroborated by the fact that he chose this work, over others perhaps even more important, to keep it at home, close to him, as if it were a child one cherishes and whose qualities are those one had hoped to give him."