Important Collectors Wristwatches, P...
Geneva, Nov 16, 2008
LOT 31
Martin-Pouzait Escapement & Quarter-Repeating DeBelle, Rue St. Honore a Paris, No. 4403. Made circa 1790. Very fine and extremely rare, quarter-repeating, 18K gold pocket watch with fast-beating Martin-Pouzait early French lever escapement.
CHF 8,500 - 11,000
USD 8,000 - 10,000 / EUR 5,500 - 7,000
C. Two-body, polished, concealed hinge, rectangular pendant with sloping shoulders. Hinged and sprung gilt metal cuvette with pinhole release catch. D.White enamel with Breguet numerals, outer gold painted minute track, gold painted signature, winding aperture at 2 o?clock, gilt brass dial plate edge engraved with a repeated leaf pattern. Gold heart hands. M. 45 mm., frosted gilt, cylindrical pillars, fusee and chain, maintaining power, the top plate cut away for the barrel which 32 is held by a separate bridge, fast-beating Martin-Pouzait lever escapement with safety action, the plate with aperture to view the escapement, three-arm brass balance, the anchor pivot hole with steel endplate, blued steel flat balance spring, index regulator with scale on the perimeter of the balance cock, repeating with two polished steel hammers on a bell in the back of the case activated by depressing the pendant. Dial, dial plate edge and cuvette signed. Diam. 54 mm.
| Grading System | |
|---|---|
Grade: AAA |
Excellent |
Case: 3-10 |
Good Patinated |
Movement: 3* |
Good Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense |
Dial: 3-28-01 |
Good Replacements HANDS Original |
Notes
Martin-Pouzait Escapement The Martin Pouzait escapement is a rapid beating escapement that was used by mostly French watchmakers at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, it was also used by one or two English makers, notably Recordon. It is a variation of Pouzait?s famous seconds-beating lever escapement but instead of having a large balance and slow beat, theMartin-Pouzait has a smaller balance and fast beat but uses the same design of lever. In 1786 Jean Moïse Pouzait (1743-1793) presented a model of his lever escapement to the Geneva Society of Arts. The idea seems to derive from the pinwheel escapement in clocks and as in the pin-wheel there was no safety action (later ones, including this watch, have the safety action). There are some differences, however: Pouzait's pallets are not just pins, they are small pin-like rectangular teeth, so in fact it is an escapement with divided lift. Pouzait was one of the first to introduce the lever escapement to the Continent.
DeBelle Jean-François DeBelle is listed by Tardy as becoming master in 1781 and working in the Rue St. Honore between 1787 and 1800.
Literature: La Montre Française, Adolphe Chapiro, Les Editions de l?Amateur, 1991, pp. 283, 284 & 285, fig. 568 and front cover.