Lot 94

Swiss, Case No. 8323, 56 mm, 120 g, circa 1810
An important gold enamel pocket watch with four automatons, studded with half pearls "The Cooperage"
Case: 18k gold, the back cover with translucent cobalt blue and opaque black enamelling over an engine-turned ground, the bezels on the front and back side set with half-pearls. Dial: four colour gold automaton scene and polychrome enamelled landscape; peripheral enamel hour dial. Movm.: bridge movement, keywind, firegilt, engraved, 2 florally engraved barrels, cylinder escapement, three-arm brass balance.
The four-colour gold automaton scene shows a cooperage where the following sequences are performed:
1. On the left, a cooper hammering
2. In the front, a second cooper planing
3. On the side, a barrel during the toasting phase
4. On the far right, water "running" from a well.
In the foreground a chased scene shows cooper tools and a sleeping dog. The enamel background is painted with a polychrome alpine river landscape with a village and a fisherman in his boat.
The Art of the Automaton in Geneva
During the 1780s, Geneva opened a most intriguing chapter of horological history. The city developed, with great flair, the art of automatons: machines designed to imitate the movements of live beings or creatures. They ranged from the simplest forms, where a figure’s moving arms could point to the time, to complex, full-scale productions, such as pastoral scenes, theatre pieces or concerts. Automata were soon being used to animate a wide variety of objects, such as scent bottles, amphorae, mirrors or snuffboxes; their use as timepieces was often merely a pretext for possessing these exquisite creations. And since where there is life, there is sound, the automata were fitted with a musical mechanism. The acknowledged masters of this marriage between ornamental watches and automata included Pierre Morand, Henry Capt, Isaac Daniel Piguet and Philippe Samuel Meylan as well as the Jaquet Droz workshop in Geneva, with colleagues and successors Jean-Frédéric Leschot and Jacob Frisard. All were the brilliant creators of musical watches functioning first with chiming bells, and later with a cylinder or pin-drum that caused a comb made up of a set of blades to vibrate. These watches were especially prized in the East and during trade with Turkey and China they acquired a subtle local touch, a discreetly exotic charm that makes them easy to distinguish today. In the hands of the Rochat family and the Bruguier workshop, this tradition continued until 1850.
Source: La Tribune des Arts présente en exclusivité le Patek Philippe Museum, http://www.patekmuseum.com/as of 10/07/2011.