97th Auction

2018/5/12

Lot 429

Duquesne à Paris, 59 mm, 218 g, circa 1700
A heavy one-handed verge pocket watch "Oignon" with alarm
Case: silver, open-worked edge decorated with volutes, masks, birds and rabbits and furthermore with medallions and engraved town views, rear bell. Dial: silver champlevé, central alarm disc. Movm.: full plate movement, chain/fusee, three-arm brass balance.
"Oignons" were most popular in France during the last 30 years of the Sun King’s reign; only a few of them were produced later than that. Single-handed oignons without extra functions are always wound through the hand’s pivot where a central steel wheel under the dial transmits the power to another wheel on the worm gear shaft; two-handed oignons are designed with a winding hole in the dial. Presumably there were workshops in France that produced ebauches for oignons, however, as of today no such ebauche has ever surfaced. Oignons have a large gap between the plates which means that the parts of the movement are well visible; the viewer can easily see the individual parts and how they work like in a large-scale model - this was part of the great appeal these watches had. The oignon is robust and useful pocket watches that - in contrast to the previous pocket and pendant watches at the time - shows the time with adequate accuracy.

Sold

estimated
2.5006.000 €
Price realized
3.700 €