Important Collectors’ Wristwatches Po...

Geneva, Hotel Des Bergues, Oct 21, 1995

LOT 414

Lepaute Le jeune Invenit, circa 1780. Elegant and extremely rare mahogany one wheel weight driven long case regulator.

CHF 90,000 - 120,000

Sold: CHF 92,000

C. Mahogany, glazed on face and sides with plain base, dentil comice beneath stepped moulded cresting and engine-turned gilt brass bezel. D. Silvered chapter ring with Roman numerals, outer Arabic minute ring and subsidiary auto-reverse double 60 seconds slotted sector with pointer. Blued steel "poker and beetle" hands. M. Brass circular with mirror polished back plate and skeletonised front plate, pin-wheel escapement with sector shaped escape wheel, subsidiary double steel cylinder escapement mounted on its arbor and releasing every 60 seconds the very large escape wheel with pin-teeth placed alternatively on either side. Concealed motion work. Seconds beating pendulum with eliptical brass bob and beat adjustment on the crutch. Single weight with endless rope and double-pulley, maintained in tension by a small counter-weight. Signed on the dial. In very good condition. Dim. 198 cm.


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Notes

Produced between 1775 and 1780, this dock is built on the principe of that invented in January 1754 and described and illustrated by Jean André Lepaute in his Traité d'Horlogerie, pp. 139-146, pl. XI, but without strinking train. Jean-Baptiste Lepaute called Le Jeune was born in 1727, one of the nine children of André Le Paute a blacksmith at Thonnelalong. In 1747 Jean-Baptiste moved to Paris to join his brother Jean-André in the clock-making business that he had begun in 1740. In Paris Jean-Baptiste devised a form of flat bed turret dock which was installed in the Palais Royal where it still is, and in 1754 the one wheel dock, of which an example is offered here, and of which a description was included in his brother's Traite d'Horlogerie, Paris, 1755. pp 139-46 . This dock is a development, 'almost as simple, and easier to make' of that made by Jean-André Lepaute at the request of Pierre Le Roy in early 1751, in itself probably stimulated by the simplified dock developed by Rivaz in 1740 but not published until 1751. Jean-André Lepaute's development of Le Roy's form led to some acrimony between the two eminent makers, although both were agreed that a further variation imagined by Mazurier was entirely worthless. In 1760 and 1763, the brothers Lepaute brought their nephews Pierre-Henry and Pierre-Bazile into their business. Jean-Baptiste paid special attention to public docks, building among others the equation dock for the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, which was burnt during the insurrection of the Commune in 1871. In 1789 Jean-Baptiste retired from the business. He died on 18 March 1802.