Lot 75

Isaac Daniel Piguet à Genève, Movement No. 400, Case No. 400, Dial No. 400, 61 mm, 161 g, circa 1830
A unique skeletonized minute repeating pocket watch of museum quality, with quarter hour/hour strike, automaton and musical movement with carillon that activates on the hour or at will by pressing a small pin. We know of no other example with this type of movement
Case: 18k pink gold, engine-turned. Dial: enamel chapter ring, skeletonized centre showing the movement, figural automaton with guitar playing lady in two- colour gold. Movm.: bridge movement, scratched signature on the edge of the movement, keywind, 5 hammers / 5 gongs, 4 barrels, pinned-disc musical mechanism (sur plateau) with vibrating blades, mirror-polished levers for musical movement, applied rack strike on both sides with polished steel levers; cylinder escapement, three-arm ring balance.
A slider in the band serves as a kind of safety device to prevent the music from being activated accidentally. A tiny pin at 2 o’clock releases the musical movement. The front bezel conceals a lever to activate/deactivate the music playing on the hour. When the music plays, a lady with a guitar moves her arm; the automaton figure sits in the lower part of the skeletonised dial in front of the visible musical movement "sur plateau" with a pin wheel and lamellae.
On the back are two more levers: One for "Silence" to disable the strike and the other to choose between Grande and Petite Sonnerie.
A total of five hammers and five gongs are installed:
- three for the minute repeater
- two for the quarter hour/hour strike.
Isaac Daniel Piguet was born in 1775 in Le Chenit in the Vallée de Joux; he was the son of David Samuel Piguet and Anne Élisabeth Nicole (1734); other sources, however, name Pierre Moïse Piguet and Élisabeth Nicole (1745) as his parents. Piguet worked with his brother-in-law Henry Daniel Capt as Piguet & Capt, before starting a partnership with Philippe Samuel‎ Meylan to establish the manufactory Piguet & Meylan at Rue Rousseau no. 45; it existed until 1828. Piguet and Meylan specialised in enamel pocket watches with automatons, musical movements and minute repeaters. On October 29, 1795 Isaac Daniel married Jeanne Françoise Capt, a daughter of watchmaker Charles Samuel Capt. The couple had three children and their only son David Auguste also trained to be a watchmaker. After the end of the Piguet & Meylan partnership, Isaac Daniel Piguet worked with his son David Auguste in Geneva until he died on January 20, 1841.
Source: https://watch-wiki.org/index.php?title=Piguet,_Isaac_Daniel, as of 10/01/2018