The Sandberg Watch Collection

Hotel Richemond, Geneva, Mar 31, 2001

LOT 263

Jn. Js. Rousseau, Geneva, circa 1640.Very fine and extremely rare small silver single-hand watch.

CHF 25,000 - 30,000

USD 15,000 - 18,000

C. Two-body, 'bassine' with curved band, entirely fluted including the hinged bezel, small rosette on the back, tulip-shaped pendant, loose ring. D. Applied silver ring with Roman chapters and half-hour divisions fixed to a gilt metal plate engraved with flowers and strawberries, in the centre a town scene. Blued-steel hand. M. 30.1 mm o, gilt brass full plate, turned baluster pillars, fusee and gut-line for the going train, verge escapement, three-arm bronze circular foliot, elongated gilded, perced and engraved cock, ratchet wheel and click set-up.Signed on the movement.Diam. 35 mm. Published in the Sandberg book, pages 58-59.


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Grading System
Grade:
Case: 3 - 6 - 15
Movement: 3 - 6*
Dial: 3 - 04

Notes

Rousseau Jean and JacquesThis watch presents what is most likely the joint signature of Jacques Rousseau, master watchmaker in the first half of the 17th century, and his brother Jean le Jeune (1606-1684), also a master watchmaker and 'juré'. Jean le Jeune taught several apprentices, among them Isaac II, Bordier and Ypolite Noel in 1631, Jean-François Lachis in 1644, Pierre Bérard in 1649, Antoine Gagnier in 1652, Jean Blanchet and Amédée Marchand in 1659. In the Geneva Musée de l'Horlogerie et de l'émaillerie (inv. No.AD 2247), there is a watch in a virtually identical case signed J. Rousseau, which must have been made by the same casemaker, and also a cross watch by him in the British Museum, and a rock crystal watch with scalloped edges and a very similar movement in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.'Dictionnaire des Horlogers Genevois', by Osvaldo Patrizzi, Antiquorum Editions, Geneva, 1998.