Important Watches, Wristwatches and C...

Geneva, Hotel Des Bergues, Apr 18, 1998

LOT 434

French, circa 1900. Unique and highly unusual quarter striking, moon phase astronomical, world-time weight driven centreseconds skeleton clock with remontoire and special escapement, also showing the times of high and low tides.

C. Brass posted frame with turned columns, the front ones with vase finials, built on the principal of horizontal turret clocks, gilt bronze bezel with leaf decoration. D. Brass 24 hour chapter ring with twice twelve hour Roman chapters on white enamel cartouches and mother-of-pearl half-hour divisions, inner concentric mother-of-pearl world-time revolving chapter ring engraved with the names of 45 cities or locations around the world. Blued-steel "Louis XIV" hands. Subsidiary dial above giving the time of high and low tides, outer phase of the moon featured by a small revolving moon with brass outer ring inlaid with small mother-of-pearl cartouches engraved with the age of the moon. It is flanked below with two small other subsidiary skeletonised motherof- pearl chapter ring applied on a blued-steel ground with respectively the dates and clays of the week engraved on small pink gold cartouches. M. Hour and quarter striking independent weight driven trains, striking on three bells and rewinding the small remontoire weight of the going train. Unrecorded facing teeth double concentric escape wheel counterpoised anchor escapement, gridiron siuii