Important Collectors Watches, Pocket ...

Hong Kong, Jun 08, 2008

LOT 320

Le Jardin de Cupidon Attributed to Piguet & Meylan, No. 11795. Made circa 1820. Fine, quarter-repeating, musical and automaton rose gold pocket watch with four automaton actions, playing music on the hour or at will.

C. Four-body, "Empire", mastermark IE, reeded band, polished bezels, pendant and bow, the back engine-turned grains d?orge, the interior of the back cover with engraved dedication, bolts for the music and repeat locking in the band. Hinged gilt metal cuvette. D. Small white enamel with Arabic numerals, outer minute track, painted on enamel scene of a classical garden with two applied multicoloured gold cherubs resting on urns appearing to strike the hours and quarters on bells, applied multicoloured gold automaton below of a seated man playing the lyre and a cherub striking the triangle in a landscape. Blued steel Breguet hands. M. 52 mm, gilt, going barrels for the going and musical trains, cylinder escapement, brass three-arm balance, the balance, brass escape wheel and third wheel jeweled, flat balance spring, index regulator, sur plateau musical movement with 29 tuned steel teeth playing on both sides of the pinned disc, silence/musique lever protruding from under the cuvette. Cuvette with apocryphal signature and number 20112, movement and case punch numbered 11795. Diam. 58 mm. The master mark ?IE? punched on the inside of the back cover is that of the case maker who made many cases for Piguet & Meylan in Geneva.