6,900 CHF
Lemaire, Paris, circa 1810. Very fine and very rare gold and silver, dead center-seconds pocket watch with virgule escapement and stop feature. Four-body, “Empire”, engine-turned back, gold bezels, hinges and bow balls, reeded band, gilt hinged cuvette. White enamel, by master dialmaker Lucard, radial Roman numerals, outer minute divisions. Blued steel Breguet hands. Notes The watch, clearly showing the influence of Jaquet-Droz, features an interesting and simple dead-seconds mechanism by means of two ratchet wheels gearing together; the one on which the dead-seconds hand is mounted is held by a jump spring in the same manner as the jump spring in modern chronograph minute registers. Nicolas-Constant Lemaire was born in Orchies in 1757, and apprenticed in Paris in 1772. He worked in Ferney, then with the Jaquet-Droz. Lemaire wanted to settle in Paris, place Dauphine. He made inquiries in Paris on behalf of the Manufacture de Besançon. Afterwards, he sought to establish a high-quality manufacture d'horlogerie in Paris. He and Bellot made a report to the Commission d'Agriculture et des Arts, proposing to make automaton watches, singing birds, ring watches, repeating watches, and equation watches. He and Glaezner became directors of the Versailles Manufacture in 1796. At the Exhibition of year VI, Lemaire showed a clock with organ pipes and a carillon. Afterwards, he seems to have disappeared, and probably died around 1832.
Auctioneer:
Antiquorum
Date:
2004-11-14
