Important Collectors’ Wristwatches, P...

Hong Kong, Apr 23, 2006

LOT 331

?Pocket Chronometer? Will(ia)m Mottu, Geneve. Made for the English market, circa 1850. Fine and rare, 18K gold pocket chronometer with unusual banking for the detent.

HKD 20,000 - 30,000

USD 2,500 - 4,000 / EUR 2,000 - 3,200

C. Four-body, ?bassine et filets?, Mastermark ?PM?, engine turned and polished. Hinged gold cuvette. D. White enamel with radial Roman numerals, outer minute track, subsidiary seconds. Blued steel hands. M. 40 mm, 18???, frosted gilt, half-plate, fusee and chain with Harrison?s maintaining power, Earnshaw type chronometer escapement with spring footed detent, spring footed banking arm parallel to the detent, cut bimetallic compensation balance with gold temperature and meantime adjustment screws, free-sprung blued steel helical balance spring, diamond endstone. Dial and movement signed. Diam. 48 mm.


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Grading System
Grade: AA

Very good
Case: 3-15

Good

Slightly rusted
Movement: 3*

Good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense
Dial: 3-01

Good

HANDS Original

Notes

Mottu A well-known family of watchmakers working in Geneva in the second half of the nineteenth century, known, among other things, for supplying movements to E.J. Dent in London. Ad. Mottu, 131 rue des Etuves. 1830 - 1831, was an eminent finisher and maker of balance- springs. At the Geneva Exposition in 1828 he presented a series of spherical balance-springs, and in 1829 he signed a petition for the construction of a new observatory. "Dictionnaire des Horlogers Genevois" by Osvaldo Patrizzi, Antiquorum Editions, Geneva, 1998.