Important Modern & Vintage Timepieces

Geneva, May 13, 2012

LOT 365

LE ROY - THE ROCOCO GARDEN Julien Le Roy à Paris, No. 569. Made in Friedberg, circa 1740. Very fine and rare, large, repoussé silver, four-train coach watch with hour and quarter striking and repeating, date and alarm.

CHF 20,000 - 40,000

USD 22,000 - 45,000 / EUR 17,000 - 33,000

Sold: CHF 25,000

C. Two-body, very fi nely pierced, chased and engraved with asymmetric scrollwork, bezel decorated to match, the back with a scene of courting couples in a rococo garden, strike/silent lever in the dial plate, pendant with loose barrel and ring. D. White enamel with radial Roman numerals, outer minute track and Arabic fi ve minute numerals, date aperture above 6, inner enamel alarm disc with Arabic numerals and half and quarter hour markers. Fine pierced gilt Louis XV hands. M. 83 mm., gilt, full-plate, rectangular pillars with applied silver foliate frets, fusee with chain, foliate engraved spring barrels for the striking, repeating and alarm trains, polished steel hammers, verge escapement, three-arm brass balance, blued steel fl at balance-spring, very fi nely pierced, chased and engraved backplate furniture, polished steel endplate, calibrated silver regulator disc with radial Roman numerals, trip quarter repeating, striking and alarm on a bell in the back of the case, with independent trains for quarters and hours, a lever for silence/strike. Movement signed. Diam. 115 mm.


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Grading System
Grade: AAA

Excellent
Case: 3

Good
Movement: 2*

Very good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense
Dial: 3-75-01

Good

ENAMEL AND VARIOUS TYPES OF DECORATION Slightly restored soft enamel

HANDS Original

Notes

This watch, an very fi ne example of its type, shows many of the characteristics of those watches made in Friedberg for other makers across Europe. Friedberg watchmakers specialized in the production of repeating and striking watches. From the beginning of the 18th century, they were making watches and coach watches with quarter, half quarter and even minute repeating mechanisms and selling them all over Europe. The cases, often of very high quality, were produced in Augsburg and the movements were made in the style of the country for which they were destined. Some of them were signed by their makers, some bear signatures of eminent French and English makers (perhaps at their request, when they were retailing them), still others bear the signature of their makers, written backwards, together with the names of cities in which they were intended to be sold. Until the relatively recent discovery of a large quantity of ebauches, blancs and completed movements which had never been cased, and their study by serious specialists such as Sebastian Whitestone, these watches were wrongly attributed to unrecorded makers from different European countries. For an article on German watches by Christian Pfeiffer Belli, see: Antiquorum Vox Magazine, Spring 2006, p. 14.