Previously in the collection of Madame C .......this watch was sold in Paris at the Hotel Drouot on 3 February 1949, lot 18. Fine example of a coach watch made in Friedberg for the English Market. Friedberg watchmakers were specialised in the production of repeating and striking watches. Already in the early years of the 18th century, they were producing watches and coach watches with quarter, half quarter and even minute repeating mechanism and selling them in all Europe. The cases, often of very high quality were produced in Augsburg and their movements were in the style of the country for which they were made. Some of these watches were signed by their makers, some are bearing signatures of eminent French or English makers ( may he at their request, when retailed by them), some others had the signature of their makers with an inverted spelling, together with the name of a town of the country for which they were intended to be sold. Until the recent discovery of a large quantity of ehauches, Hanes and completed movements which had never been cased and their study by serious specialist such as Sebastian Whitestone, these watches were wrongly attributed to unrecorded makers from different European countr ies. A very similar watch was sold by Antiquorum in Geneva on 23 April 1995, lot 435. Venus and Adonis According to the legend, Adonis was born from an incestuous union between Myrrha and his father Cinyras, King of Paphos in Cyprus (or possibly Belos, King of Egypt, or even Theias, King of Assyria). The gods transformed Myrrha into the myrrh-tree and in clue course Adonis was born from the tree when the trunk was split open by a wild boar. Venus (or Aphrodite) was struck by the beauty of the child Adonis and put him in the care of Persephone (or Proserpine), the queen of the underworld. But Persephone too loved the youth and refused to give him back to Venus. Jupiter (or Zeus) had to pass judgment to resolve the question between the two goddesses. There are two versions of this judgment: in the first, Adonis was to spend a third of the year with each goddess while the rest of the time as he preferred and chose to spend that time with Venus; in the other version, the judgment was made by the Muse Calliope, Jupiter not wishing to arbitrate, and each goddess was allowed to have Adonis for half of the year. Both versions are indicative of Adonis' function since he was the god of vegetation and nature. The cause of Adonis' birth became also that of his death because he died after being attacked by a wild boar while hunting. Venus was overcome with despair and from the blood of his wounds, created a new flower, the red anemone, a wild flower that each year blooms briefly and then dies. Adonis, imported probably from the Phoenicians, came to be revered as a dying-and-rising god. In ntidsunnner, Athenians held Adonia, a yearly festival representing his death and resurrection.