18,400 CHF
B. G. Martinot à Paris, circa 1680. Fine and very rare silver pair cased early balance spring set, central winding alarm watch without fusee. Double body, bassine with split bezel, the border of the back finely pierced and engraved with inhabited foliage. Outer silver, shark skin covered protecting case. Silver champleve with Roman chapter and inner revolving alarm setting disc with Arabic mimerais. blued-steel single hand. Hinged gilt brass full plate with Egyptian pillars, gilt brass fixed barrel, verge escapement, plain steel three-arm balance, gilt brass Louis XIV pierced and engraved cock, alarm train with fixed gilt brass barrel, pierced and engraved with foliage, striking on a bell. Signed on the back plate. In very good condition. Diam. 60 mm. Notes Baltazar Gilles Martinot, son of Gilles II and Elisabeth Lejeune, horn in 1690 and died in 1721. This watch represents an alternative development of the short-lived experiment of making oignon watches without fusee in the belief that the balance spring alone would make for additional accuracy (see lots 35,36). Usually the fusee was replaced by a 'fixed' barrel with a going-arbor carrying the great wheel. In this case, the watch is fitted with a toothed going-barrel, in the same way as watches dating from the latter half of the 18th. century. It is wound from the centre by means of off-set gearing and incorporates a click-work between the plates.
Auctioneer:
Antiquorum
Date:
1993-11-14
