12,980 CHF
“Diamond-Set Balance” Swiss. Made for the Chinese market, circa 1810. Very fine and very rare, 18K pink gold, center dead seconds watch with Pouzait escapement, date, eccentric dial and diamond-set balance wheel. wo-body, “Directoire”, glazed on both sides. Gilt brass dust ring. 50 mm., gilt brass full plate, fixed barrel, slow-beat Pouzait lever escapement with large diamond-set balance with four spiral arms set on the backplate, index regulator. Diam. 59 mm. To be sold without reserve Notes Pouzait (also Pouzzait or Puzait, 1743-1793) In 1786 Jean Moyse Pouzait presented a model of his lever escapement to the Geneva Society of Arts. The idea seems to derive from the pin-wheel escapement in clocks and as in pin-wheel there was no safety action (later ones, including the present watch have the safety action). There are some differences, Pouzait's pallets being not just pins, but small pin-like rectangular teeth, so that this is in fact an escapement with divided lift. Pouzait, who eleven years earlier had invented the independent seconds mechanism, possibly wanted to make a simpler dead seconds mechanism. Whatever his motives were, he was one of the first to introduce the lever escapement to the Continent. See: Dictionnaire des horlogers genevois, by Osvaldo Patrizzi, Antiquorum Editions, 1998. This lot was previously sold by Antiquorum, Geneva, in April, 2003, lot 372.
Auctioneer:
Antiquorum
Date:
2006-04-02
