Important Watches Collector's Wristwa...

The Ritz-carlton Hotel, Feb 20, 2005

LOT 211

Charles Abraham Bruguier, Geneva, No. 130, circa 1845. Fine and rare large gilt bronze and enamel singing bird box.

HKD 1,000,000 - 1,300,000

EUR 100,000 - 130,000 / USD 130,000 - 170,000

C. Cast and gilt bronze, the body with pierced and chased scrollwork panels backed by dark blue compositionpanels and intersected by glazed oval panels containing paintings of flowers, scroll feet, hinged floral cast domedlid with pierced scrolls and set with a large glazed oval panel painted with flowers, the lid opening to reveal theoval hinged singing bird cover decorated with a painted enamel Swiss alpine scene, the underside painted onenamel with flowers, chased and engraved foliate and flower surround, turquoise button to start the bird mecha-nism,large, richly colored feathered bird moving the head, beak, tail and wings. M. Massive, rectangular, brass,turned pillars, fusee with chain, cams and flywheel controlling the movement of the bird, large rectangularbellows.Signed and numbered on the movement.Dim 170 x 130 x 120 mm.


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Grading System
Grade:
Case: 3 - 22
Movement: 3*

Good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense
Dial: -

Notes

Charles Abraham Bruguier senior (1788-1862) and Charles Abraham Bruguier the younger (1818- 1891) Charles Bruguier the elder was the son of a clockmaker and became a clockmaker himself. In 1815, he took his family to London, where his son, also named Charles Abraham, was born in 1818. It is apparently only after 1823 and the family?s return to Geneva that Bruguier the elder first began making singing birds. Bruguier the younger is first listed in the 1843 census as having a workshop independent of his father?s, at Terreaux de Chantepoulet 41. Sharon and Christian Bailly, ?Flights of Fancy, Mechanical Singing Birds?, Antiquorum Editions, 2001, pp. 299-301.