Diamond-set WheelUnsigned

Diamond-set WheelUnsigned, Swiss, circa 1810, made for the Chinese market. Fine and very rare 18K pink gold, center dead seconds watch with Pouzait escapement, date, eccentric dial and diamond-set balance. wo-body, Directoire, glazed on both sides. Notes Pouzait (also Pouzzait or Puzait). (1743-1793)In 1786 Jean Moyse Pouzait presented a model of his lever escapement to the Geneva Society of Arts. The idea seems to derive from the pin-wheel escapement in clocks and as in pin-wheel there was no safety action (later ones, including these two, have the safety action). There are some differences, Pouzait's pallets being not just pins, but small pin-like rectangular teeth, so that this is in fact an escapement with divided lift. Pouzait, who eleven years earlier had invented the independent secods mechanism, possibly wanted to make a simpler dead seconds mechanism. Whatever his motives were, he was one of the first to introduce the lever escapement to the Continent.Dictionnaire des horlogers genevois, by Osvaldo Patrizzi, Antiquorum Editions, 1998.