Antoine Frères

Antoine Frères, Besançon, case No. 52458. Made circa 1875. Very fine, miniature, 18K pink gold Louis XVI style keyless lady's pendant watch. Four-body, “Louis XVI”, polished. Dedicated hinged gold cuvette. White enamel with radial Roman numerals, outer minute divisions and Arabic five- minute numerals. Pierced gold Louis XV hands. Notes The making of miniature watches has always been a challenge for watchmakers. Many have vied with each other to produce ever smaller mechanisms enabling them to boast of making "The World's Smallest Watch". The earliest known surviving example is a tiny gold and enamel clockwatch by an unknown German maker dating from circa 1610. This remarkable watch had once belonged to Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia (The Winter Queen) and was sold as part of the Harcourt Collection at Sotheby's London in 1992. Breguet famously made a small number of miniature watches with keyless winding, these watches measuring only 18 mm. were certainly the smallest watches with keyless winding and hand-setting produced by any firm before the mid-19th Century. An example was sold by Antiquorum Geneva on 20th October 1991, Lot 263. The world's smallest tourbillon, made by Fritz-Andre Robert Charrue of Le Locle and dated 1945, was sold at Antiquorum, April 12, 2003, lot 559.