Important Modern & Vintage Timepieces

Geneva, May 13, 2012

LOT 367

LEPAUTE QUARTER REPEATING WATCH Lepaute a Paris, No. 1066. Made circa 1770. Fine and rare, Louis XV, gold quarter repeating à toc pocket watch. Accompanied by a fancy gold key.

CHF 4,000 - 6,000

USD 4,500 - 6,500 / EUR 3,300 - 5,000

C. Two-body, 'Louis XV', engraved with a basketweave pattern, the back with radial line decoration, bezel engraved to match. D. White enamel, radial Roman numerals, outer minute track and Arabic fi ve-minute numerals. Gold Louis hands. M. 36.5 mm, hinged, gilt brass full plate, cylindrical pillars, fusee and chain, verge esapement, plain three-arm brass balance with blued-steel fl at balance spring, continental cock pierced and engraved with scrolls, rack and pinion regulator with silver plate, repeating on the inside of the case activated by depressing the pendant. Dial and movement signed, further signed on the dial plate edge. Diam. 45 mm.


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Grading System
Grade: A

Good
Case: 3

Good
Movement: 3*

Good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense
Dial: 3-77-06

Good

ENAMEL AND VARIOUS TYPES OF DECORATION Restored soft enamel

HANDS Partially replaced

Notes

Lepaute. One of most eminent families of Paris watch and clockmakers from the end of the 18th century. Jean André Lepaute (born 1720), in 1749 married Nicole Reine Etable de la Brière, a very remarkable woman who was a well known scholar, elected to the Académie des Sciences of Beziers in 1761. In 1760 he was joined by his brother, Jean Baptiste (born 1727), and in 1763 by his two nephews Pierre Henry and Pierre Bazile Lepaute. The company was chosen to build a clock with equation of time for the City Hal as well as for Les Invalides in Paris, and a member of the family, became Clockmaker to the Emperor Napoléon, another to Louis Philippe and Napoléon III.