18,975 CHF
“Exposition Universelle de 1867” Henri Boitel, Paris. Made for the Universal Exhibition of 1867. Extremely fine and very rare, 18K gold pocket chronometer with Réaumur thermometer. Four-body, “bassine et filets”, polished, engine-turned inside back cover and cuvette. Hinged gold cuvette. White enamel with radial Roman numerals, outer minute track, subsidiary seconds at 6, Réaumur thermometer scale at 12 calibrated for 0 -100 Fahrenheit and -20 to + 40 Centigrade, central aperture exposing the thermometer mechanism. Blued steel “spade” hands. 42 mm (18 1/2’’’), nickel, exposed fusee and chain with Harrison’s maintaining power, gold train, jewels in screwed gold chatons, gold wheel train, Earnshaw type chronometer escapement with spring footed detent, jewelled locking stone, cut bimetallic compensation balance with gold elliptical weights, mean time adjustment nuts and peripheral temperature adjustment screws, blued steel helical balance spring with terminal curve and adjustable stud mounted to a special slide for minute adjustment, diamond endstone, index regulator. Movement signed. Diam. 50 mm Notes The present lot was exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867. The Exhibition was Napoleon III’s answer to the London 1851 Exhibition, to demonstrate to the world that France was an industrial and technical power in its own right.
Auctioneer:
Antiquorum
Date:
2005-10-16
