Important Modern & Vintage Timepieces

Geneva, Nov 08, 2014

LOT 669

EXCEPTIONAL & HIGHLY COMPLICATED MINUTE REPEATER WITH CONTINUOUS AND STOPPABLE SPLIT CENTER SECONDS, CALENDAR & THERMOMETER Attributed to Louis Audemars, Brassus, case No. 2296, retailed by Marcks & Co., Bombay & Poona. Made circa 1860. Extremely fine and exceptionally rare, large, minute-repeating, 18K gold keyless pocket watch with continuous sweep center-seconds with stoppable and jumping extra split hand, triple-date calendar, moon phases, lunar calendar, Réaumur thermometer and gold wheel train.

CHF 40,000 - 60,000

HKD 345,000 - 500,000 / USD 42,000 - 63,000

Sold: CHF 43,750

Four-body, bassine et filets, polished, master mark "AM"engine-turned back cover, correctors in the band, button in the crown for the stopping and re-join of the split hand. Hinged gold cuvette. White enamel with radial Roman numerals, outer minute divisions and Arabic five-minute numerals, subsidiary dials for the date, days of the week and months, aperture for the moon phases with lunar calendar on the edge and Réaumur thermometer sector below. Yellow gold spade hands, blued steel date and seconds hands. 20''', matte gilt, 32 jewels, wolf's tooth winding, large going barrel, gold wheel train, counterpoised straight line lever escapement, cut bimetallic compensation balance with gold meantime and temperature adjustment screws, blued steel Breguet balance spring with overcoil, index regulator, repeating on gongs activated by a slide on the band, Réaumur thermometer bimetallic curb mounted on the dial plate.


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Grading System
Grade:
Case: 2-8

Very good

Slightly scratched
Movement: 2*

Very good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense
Dial: 2-70-01

Very good

ENAMEL AND VARIOUS TYPES OF DECORATION Hairline

HANDS Original

Notes

Dial and cuvette signed Marcks & Co, Bombay & Poona. DIAM. 54 mm. This extremely rare and complicated watch can be confidently attributed to the House of Louis Audemars by comparing it to a near-identical watch with the same type of distinctive caliber and the very unusual seconds and split feature which is illustrated in "Louis-Benjamin Audemars", Hartmut Zantke, 2003, p. 245. The dial design with Réaumur thermometer is also quite distinctively Louis Audemars, as is the repeat-slide with concave depression. At first glance, this watch appears to have a split-seconds chronograph mechanism, whereas in fact it has a sweep center-seconds hand which cannot be stopped and then an additional hand which can either travel in unison with the seconds hand or be stopped by depressing the button in the crown and then made to rejoin the seconds hand by pressing the button again. This is a rarely found mechanism that is found on only a handful of known watches by Louis Audemars and was made before Adolphe Nicole's invention in 1862 of the true chronograph with return-to-zero function. The Réaumur scale also known as the "octogesimal division" is a temperature scale in which the freezing and boiling points of water are set to 0 and 80 degrees respectively. The scale is named after René Antoine Ferchault de Rèaumur, who first designed something similar in 1730.