86,000 CHF
Breguet, No. 2826, sold to Colonel Harvey on August 28, 1816 for 2500 francs. An important small 20K gold hunting-cased watch with date and à tact hand built along the principles of the Garde Temps, in original morocco leather fitted box. Accompanied by original gold chain, original male gold key, and a Breguet certificate. Four-body, "forme quatre baguettes", by master casemaker Tavernier, No. 3426, engine-turned, spring-loaded front cover, gold à tact hand on the back, hinged bezel, band with 12 gold touch knobs, back cover with bayonet fixing with shuttered winding aperture. Notes An important watch exemplifying Breguet's genius both from the esthetic as well as the technical point of view. The elegant dial design is still used for wristwatches 180 years later. The balance jewels, which are of sapphire, are made of a single piece.They are pierced only half-way through, so as to form both the pierced jewel and the cap jewel at once. Furthermore, they are friction-fit! Today, this is common practice in almost all wristwatches, but at the time, when jeweling was far from a common practice, this was unheard-of. The balance is made of two laminae of steel and a special silver/copper alloy which was apparently invented by Breguet and employed in his best watches, including the perpetuelles. Each of its 3 arms is terminated with a block for poising “in the raw”, the Breguet counterpart of the English “winged balance”. The safety feature on the balance which assures that
Auctioneer:
Antiquorum
Date:
2003-10-11
