Jaeger-LeCoultre

Watch with Six Complications Lecoultre & Co. , Swiss, No. 4459. Made between 1880 and 1885. Extremely fine and very rare, large and heavy, minute-repeating, 18K rose gold hunting-cased, keyless pocket watch with retrograde perpetual calendar and phases of the moon. Four-body, "bassine", solid, polished, pusher on the band for advancing the calendar. Hinged gold cuvette. Notes The present watch has survived in superb condition and is particularly interesting because it exhibits a very rarely found and sophisticated horological feature. The perpetual calendar with retrograde date is extremely uncommon and was made by very few workshops including Breguet and LeCoultre. A very similar watch signed by Marius LeCoultre was sold by Antiquorum, Geneva, November 11, 2001, lot 111. Due to the extreme similarity of this watch to the present watch it is very likely that the maker was actually Marius LeCoultre for LeCoultre & Co. Marius Lecoultre A watchmaker and repairer as well as a dealer in fine watches. A highly reputed firm, founded in 1848, that made complicated watches of superior quality. Lecoultre perfected a chronograph with vertical displacement of the engagement wheel. He received an honorable mention at the Geneva "concours de chronométrie" in 1887. He showed complicated and precision watches at the Chicago Universal Exhibition of 1893, and also took part in the National Exhibition in Geneva in 1896.