Important Collectors’ Wristwatches, P...

Geneva, Nov 16, 2008

LOT 243

Royal Blue Attributed to Piguet &Meylan, Genève, No. 3808.Made for the Chinese market, circa 1820. Very fine and rare, musical, quarter-repeating, center-seconds, 18K gold, enamel and pearl-set pocket watch, playing music on the hour or at will.

C. Four-body, ?Empire?, the bezels, pendant and bow decorated with split pearls, the band decorated with dark blue, red and cream champleve enamel, the back cover set with a royal blue translucent guilloche enamel panel. Hinged gilt cuvette, apertures for the handsetting, going and musical trains. D. White enamel with radial Roman numerals, outer minute track and dot seconds divisions, Arabic fifteen-second numerals. Blued steel Breguet hands. M. 49 mm., matte gilt, standing barrels for the going and musical trains, cylinder escapement, threearm balance with polished steel endplate, blued steel flat balance spring, index regulator, repeating on gongs activated by depressing the pendant, sur plateau musical movement with 23 tuned blued steel teeth playing on both sides of the pinned disc, silence lever protruding from the edge of the cuvette, bolt to activate the music on the band. Movement numbered 3808. Diam. 58 mm.