Important Collectors’ Wristwatches Po...

Geneva, Hotel Des Bergues, Oct 21, 1995

LOT 525

J. Broockhimer, Swiss, No. 14273, circa 1870. Very fine and unique, 18 ct. gold hunting cased pocket chronometer with one minute tourbillon regulator and 30 hour power reserve indication, certainly made as an exhibition piece for the Universal Exhibition of Philadelphia in 1876.

CHF 60,000 - 80,000

C. Three body, massive, engine-turned the borders engraved with scrolling foliage, the cover with the pavilion of the United States of America surmounted by the Stars and Stripes Banner. D. White enamel with Breguet numerals, subsidiary seconds and up-and-down scale. Blued "fleurs-delys" hands. M. Glazed nickel plated,with gold wheel train, spotted decoration, 13 jewels, inverted fusee with chain and maintaining power, pivoted detent escapement with gold escape wheel, cut bimetallic balance with gold screws and recessed arms to allow greater space for the free sprung blued steel helical balance spring. Three-arm polished steel tourbillon carnage of early Swiss type which apparently influence the Lange first type, driven by the third wheel. Signed on the case. In very good condition, slight wear to the case. Diam. 59 mm.


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Notes

The maker of this chronometer is not known although it could have been the work of a Swiss emigrant to America as a display piece of his talents. Tourbillon movements became standardised in Switzerland in the second half of the 19th Century, the present model being a precursor of Langés type, and perhaps introduced by Roulet at Pont-de-Martel for Girard Perregaux since a watch this eminent maker, with a very similar tourbillon and almost identical pivoted detent escapement is illustrated in Watches - The Paul M. Chamberlain Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago - 1921, and fully described in August 1916 in The American Jeweler.