Collector's Pocket Watches, Wristwatc...

Noga Hilton, Geneva, Apr 12, 2003

LOT 467

Isâac Daniel Piguet, Geneva, circa 1800.Very fine and rare lady's musical pendant with automaton in 18K gold and enamel set with split-pearls.

CHF 26,000 - 36,000

EUR 18,000 - 25,000 / USD 19,000 - 27,000

Sold: CHF 46,000

C. Two piece, rectangular with canted corners, bezel set with half-pearls, back and bezel engraved with repeated pattern, activating lever protruding at 7 o'clock. Front. Painted on enamel with Alpine scene, applied gold and silver automated figures of a young lady playing hurdy-gurdy and a young man leaning against a table with a bird stand tapping his foot to the rhythm. M. Rectangular with canted corners, 27 x 14 mm, brass full plate, cylindrical pillars, pinned barrel musical movement, fivetuned teeth stuck 2-2-1, activated by a rack lever with inclined teeth acting directly on the barrel ratchet wheel, pinion for a governor set in adjustable eccentric bushing with small brass weight. Signed "Piguet" under the dial in typical for Piguet style. Dim. 37 x 22 mm


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Grading System
Grade: AAA

Excellent

Case: 3
Movement: 3*
Dial: 3

Notes

One of those small objects of vertu for which Isaac Daniel Piguet and later Piguet & Capt. became famous. At the beginning of the 19th century he was the major maker of small musical objects. In fact, since they were new and most of them were made by Piguet, Genevians thought that he was also an inventor of them. They were not the only ones that were mistaken.All sorts of horological objects including fantasy objects were subject to miniaturization, among them musical watches and boxes. Prior to 1770 they required bulky bells, which seriously limited miniaturization. In 1769 Michel Joseph Ransonnet of Nancy presented the French Academy of Sciences with a new invention for mechanical music. Instead of bells he used vibrating blades. He did not make many watches, or at least not many have survived. We know of only one, now in the Patek Philippe Museum,(formerly in the Time Museum). The system was revolutionary, utilizing small blades which were set into vibration by a pinned cylinder, the same type which previously controlled the hammers striking the bells. Interestingly, the invention was then forgotten for thirty years, until, according to the report of the Geneva Society for the Arts, dated February 15, 1796, one Antoine Favre presented a new invention of mechanical music without bells or gongs.Though Favre in all likelihood invented the system independently of Ransonnet, it was the same system. This was to revolutionize Geneva's musical horology as well as the art of making objects of vertu. The miniaturization achieved due to the Ransonnet/Favre invention was tremendously important at the time, especially for the Swiss, who were the major manufacturers of musical movements. It enabled them to make small musical instruments that had never been seen before.