Important Collectors’ Wristwatches, P...

Hong Kong,the Ritz Carlton Hotel,harbour Room, 3rd Floor, Jun 02, 2007

LOT 223

?The Musicians? I.D. Piguet & P. Meylan, Geneve, No. 2128. Made for the Chinese market, circa 1820. Extremely fine and equally rare, 18K gold, painted on enamel and pearl-set, center seconds, quarter-repeating and musical automaton watch with two automata, the musical movement playing on the hour or at will.

C. Three-body, "Empire", the bezels, pendant and bow set with split-pearls, the band set with two lines of seed pearls with a royal blue enamel line between, bolt for activating the music in the band "missing painted on enamel back". D. Gold, matte, engineturned and polished, radial Roman numerals, outer minute divisions. Blued steel ?Breguet? hands. Automaton dial: very finely painted on enamel scene of a garden at a lakeside villa, the Alps in the background, the lower half with applied varicolored gold automaton scene of musicians, a seated lady playing the guitar moves her arm, a seated gentleman playing the lyre moves his arm, the whole on applied gold grass with a sheep suckling a lamb between. M. 50 mm., 22''', gilt brass, free-standing barrel, cylinder escapement, brass escape wheel, three-arm gold balance, flat balance spring, index regulator, repeating on gongs activated by depressing the pendant, sur plateau musical movement with pinned brass disc and 20 tuned blued steel teeth playing on both sides of the pinned disc, activated on the hour or at will. Movement stamped ?PM? on the dial plate, case and movement numbered. Diam. 58 mm. Property of an American Gentleman