Important Collectors’ Wristwatches, P...

Geneva, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Du Rhône, Nov 12, 2006

LOT 333

?Skeletonized Dead Center Seconds with Pouzait-Type Seconds Beating Pirouette Lever Escapement? Swiss. Made circa 1820. Very fine and extremely unusual, silver and gold pocket watch with dead center seconds, seconds-beating balance, variation of Pouzait?s lever escapement, skeletonized regulator dial and date.

CHF 55,000 - 75,000

EUR 35,000 - 47,000 / USD 45,000 - 60,000

Sold: CHF 56,640

C. Three-body, ?bassine et filet?, glazed both sides, polished gold bezels, pendant and bow, silver engine-turned band. D. Skeletonized, regulator type with silvered annular chapter rings for the hours and minutes with radial Roman numerals, date from 1-31, outer seconds with dot divisions and Arabic quarter minute numerals. Blued steel ?Breguet? hands. M. 48 mm., 21???, frosted gilt full plate, turned concave pillars, fusee with chain, polished steel lever escapement mounted in the center of the dial plate, counterpoised lever with opposing rack acting on a pinion with a pirouette wheel meshing with the balance wheel pinion, seconds-beating three-arm polished steel balance, the flat balance spring on the pirouette wheel, escapement partially jewelled, engraved gilt bridge, index regulator. Diam. 56 mm. Property of an Italian Gentleman


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Grading System
Grade:
Case: 3

Good

Movement: 3*

Good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense

Dial: 3-01

Good

HANDS Original

Notes

The present watch has an interesting variation of the Pouzait escapement with a seconds-beating balance to allow dead center seconds, but unlike the Pouzait escapement, the balance is small and without a balance spring. A pirhouette wheel with a balance spring meshes with the balance pinion, this wheel is driven by a toothed rack at one end of the lever and the escape wheel is set in the center of the dial plate. This watch has the additional feature of calendar and with the skeletonized regulator dial and bicolor case is visually very appealing. Pouzait Escapement. During the last quarter of the 18th century, several watchmakers tried to produce watches with dead center-seconds hands, much in favor among the scientific community and on the Chinese market. The attempt made by Moise Pouzait featured a lever escapement associated with a large seconds-beating balance. Due to its spectacular aspect, and in spite if its inertia sensitivity, Pouzait?s escapement was much appreciated by the Chinese, before the invention by Jacot of the so-called ?Chinese duplex? escapement, enabling the production of dead center-seconds watches. In 1786 Pouzait made a model of his escapement which he presented to the Geneva Societe des Arts, and which can still be seen in their collection. The idea seems to derive from the pin-wheel escapement in clocks and as in the pin-wheel there was no safety action (later ones have the safety action). There are some differences: 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, who eleven years earlier had invented the independent seconds mechanism, possibly wanted to make a simpler mechanism for dead seconds. Whatever his motives, he was one of the first to introduce the lever escapement to the Continent.