97th Auction

2018/5/12

Lot 417

A collection of two "Oignon" verge pocket watches
Firmin à Paris, 59 mm, 177 g, circa 1680
A one-handed verge pocket watch "Oignon" with mock pendulum
Case: brass. Dial: brass, firegilt, enamel cartouches with radial Roman numerals. Movm.: full plate movement, chain/fusee, "mock pendulum balance".
French watchmaker François Marie Firmin worked as a maker and retailer of timepieces in Paris and is listed with premises in the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève area in 1713. Firmin died after 1726.
Source: https://watch-wiki.org/index.php?title=Firmin,_Fran%C3%A7ois_Marie, as of 03/20/2018
"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 such as this one 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.

estimated
5.5007.000 €
Price realized
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