The Lagisses were a well-known horological family in Geneva, in the 17th and 18th centuries. This watch, whose shape and ornamentation are reminiscent of Persian decorative art, is very likely the work of Pierre Didier Lagisse, who worked in Geneva before settling in Ispahan where he became watchmaker and advisor to the Shah, making a considerable fortune in the process. The dial is unusual, being made of vermeil with a most un-European type of punched decoration and centered with a stylized floral motif which could be interpreted as the rose of Shiraz, the national flower of Persia. This is a very early example of the use of a balance spring. This watch must be counted amongst the earliest surviving examples made in Geneva with a balance spring. A further rarity, the fusee has been omitted in favor of a going arbor. The invention by Huygens in 1675 of the balance spring, with its consequent isochronism, was met with a great deal of enthusiasm. Many fine watchmakers hoped that the regularity of the balance?s oscillations might suffice to render the equalizing function of the fusee unnecessary, thus lowering, among other things, production costs. This hope, though short-lived, led to a certain number of trials. It appears that verge watches without fusee originated in Paris (Baltazar Martinot, Gribelin, Thuret, Champion) and then spread to Rouen, and apparently to Geneva, as exemplified by this watch. This piece was sold by Antiquorum on 12 April 1992, lot 558. ?Dictionnaire des horolgers genevois?, by Osvaldo Patrizzi, Antiquorum Editions, 1998.