391,300 CHF
“The Barking Dog” Piguet & Meylan, Geneve, No. 114, made for the Chinese market, circa 1820. Extremely fine and extremely rare, large, 18K gold, painted on enamel and pearl-set, quarter-repeating “barking dog” automaton watch. Eccentric, gold, set at the top of a translucent imperial blue enamel engine-turned plate, polished Roman numerals, outer dot minute divisions and engine turned center, lower part with applied varicolored gold automaton scene of a dog barking at a swan which appears to be hissing back, the dog nodding its head with each movement of the bellows. Blued steel “Breguet” hands. Notes The present watch repeats the hours and quarters with the sound of a barking dog; the rarest form of repeating. The scene is taken after Jean-Baptiste Oudry, French, (1686-1755) “Swan Attacked by a Dog”, of which he painted several copies in the 1740s. The case of the present watch is particularly fine and one of the grandest cases known for a barking dog watch. It has survived in remarkable condition and would have been destined for the Imperial Chinese court. It is now known that Piguet & Meylan used at least two separate numbering series. The barking dog series numbers are usually lower than 300. The other types of watches bear numbers up to the 7000s; one watch is known in the 9000s. It is likely that the company began its production with the barking dog models, then proceeded to other ones, but continued the production of the barking dog watches with the first series
Auctioneer:
Antiquorum
Date:
2006-11-12
