Golden Leaves" Lhoest

"Golden Leaves" Lhoest, Paris, No. 693. Made circa 1830. Very fine and rare, small, 18K varicolored gold, paste-set, granulation decorated, quarter-repeating lady’s pendant watch. To be sold without reserve Four-body, very elaborately decorated with applied varicolored gold forming a foliate and floral pattern with paste-set petals, paste-set rosette in the center, graduated granulation on edges, whole on finely matted gold background, band, bezel, bow, and pendant en suite. Hinged gold cuvette. Gold, champleve radial Roman numerals, outer minute dot divisions, engine-turned center, outermost engraved with repeated pattern. Blued steel Breguet hands. 33 mm (14’’’). frosted gilt, full-plate with cylindrical pillars, fusee and chain, verge escapement brass balance with flat balance spring, continental cock, repeating on gongs activated by depressing the pendant. Cuvette signed. Diam. 41 mm. Property of a Swiss Collector Notes Granulation a technique using tiny beads of gold, was employed, and probably invented, by the ancient Etruscans. The present lot employs real granulation, which is rare. Most of the watches from the period using this method employed a technique in which ready-to-apply gold beads wires were soldered onto the surface, thereby forming the desired pattern. Lhoest is recorded by Tardy as working in Paris around 1820 at rue du Fg St-Honoré. The present watch was previously sold by Antiquorum, Hong Kong, June 6, 2004, Lot 385.