Previously in the collection ofMadame C.......this pair of watches was sold in Paris at the Hotel Drouot on 3 February 1949, lot 18. Fine example of a coach watch made in Friedberg for the English Market. Friedberg watchmakers were specialised in the production of repeating and striking watches. From the early years of the 18th century, they were producing watches and coach watches with quarter, half quarter and even minute repeating mechanisms and selling them in all Europe. The cases, often of very high quality were produced in Augsburg and their movements were according to the style of the country for which they were made. Some of these watches were signed by their makers, some bear signatures of eminent French or English makers (maybe at their request, when retailed by them), some others have the signature of their makers with an inverted spelling, together with the name of a town of the country in which they were intended to he sold. Until the recent discovery of a large quantity of ebauches, blancs and completed movements which had never been cased and their study by serious specialists such as, Sebastian Whitestone, these watches were wrongly attributed to unrecorded makers from different European countries. A very similar watch was sold by Antiquorum in Geneva on 23 April 1995, lot 435.