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拍品专文
Generally speaking, horological school watches tend only to be simple timepieces, usually limited to the basic ‘time only’ function, meaning without the addition of any other technical complications.
The present watch is a particularly rare example of a complicated horological school watch, featuring not only a minute repeater – one of the most difficult complications for a watchmaker to construct, but also a chronograph. Furthermore, for the period, it has a very unusual skeletonized dial. All of superb quality, this work of a very talented student quite probably took over a year to complete.
Obviously highly skilled, this aspiring watchmaker cut out a traditional metal dial plate, keeping only the outer minutes/seconds and the 30 minutes register and constant seconds rings, thus emphasizing and showcasing the technical marvel of this complicated handmade mechanical timepiece.
According to the Ecole Technique de la Vallée de Joux, the watch was made around 1930. Indeed, the case is punched inside the back cover with the presumed date ‘1926’. Preserved in excellent overall condition it represents the opportunity of acquiring a unique piece of watchmaking history.
Skeleton watches
The first skeleton watch was developed around 1760 by the legendary André-Charles Caron, clockmaker for Louis XI of France. Regularly found in the timepieces of the world’s most celebrated watchmakers this visual sophistication creates the ultimate horological spectacle.
The minute repeating mechanism
Among the different watchmaking complications developed over the centuries, the repeating function is arguably the most poetic, going back to the earliest mechanical clocks. Many of the first mechanical timepieces in Europe were made for monasteries and clock towers and it was not unusual for these pieces not to have a dial or hands as time was told through the chiming of bells. Portable hour striking clocks existed by the late Renaissance, but the first known watch to strike the time on demand - the essential difference between a striking timepiece and a genuine repeater - is believed to have been invented in 1687 by the English watchmaker Daniel Quare. In 1783, Breguet's invention of the wire gong made of hardened steel to replace the hitherto used bell improved not only the quality of the sound but also helped to reduce the thickness of a watch case. Generally speaking, such gongs are circular steel coils, fixed at one end and progressively surrounding the minute repeater movement. When struck by the hammers, they vibrate, thus producing the sounds.
The repeating mechanism represents the ability of a watch to acoustically tell the time by striking small hammers onto gongs surrounding the movement (early examples onto a bell in the case back). Time can be deducted from the number and combination of the chimes. The repeating function features different options, the very first being the simple hour repeater which would strike the elapsed hours only. Following the success of such devices, an incremental array of repeaters were developed: the quarter repeater, striking the elapsed hours and quarters of an hour, the half quarter repeater, improved by telling the elapsed half quarters as well; the five minute repeater; and the final evolution: the minute repeater which indicates the precise time to the minute.
Always made in small numbers, the development and realization of the complex minute repeating mechanism was and still is a challenge for watchmakers. A momentous achievement in the past, this complication is regarded one of the pinnacles of watchmaking, produced in extremely limited quantities and always considered as the top end of the production of a firm or a watchmaker.
The present watch is a particularly rare example of a complicated horological school watch, featuring not only a minute repeater – one of the most difficult complications for a watchmaker to construct, but also a chronograph. Furthermore, for the period, it has a very unusual skeletonized dial. All of superb quality, this work of a very talented student quite probably took over a year to complete.
Obviously highly skilled, this aspiring watchmaker cut out a traditional metal dial plate, keeping only the outer minutes/seconds and the 30 minutes register and constant seconds rings, thus emphasizing and showcasing the technical marvel of this complicated handmade mechanical timepiece.
According to the Ecole Technique de la Vallée de Joux, the watch was made around 1930. Indeed, the case is punched inside the back cover with the presumed date ‘1926’. Preserved in excellent overall condition it represents the opportunity of acquiring a unique piece of watchmaking history.
Skeleton watches
The first skeleton watch was developed around 1760 by the legendary André-Charles Caron, clockmaker for Louis XI of France. Regularly found in the timepieces of the world’s most celebrated watchmakers this visual sophistication creates the ultimate horological spectacle.
The minute repeating mechanism
Among the different watchmaking complications developed over the centuries, the repeating function is arguably the most poetic, going back to the earliest mechanical clocks. Many of the first mechanical timepieces in Europe were made for monasteries and clock towers and it was not unusual for these pieces not to have a dial or hands as time was told through the chiming of bells. Portable hour striking clocks existed by the late Renaissance, but the first known watch to strike the time on demand - the essential difference between a striking timepiece and a genuine repeater - is believed to have been invented in 1687 by the English watchmaker Daniel Quare. In 1783, Breguet's invention of the wire gong made of hardened steel to replace the hitherto used bell improved not only the quality of the sound but also helped to reduce the thickness of a watch case. Generally speaking, such gongs are circular steel coils, fixed at one end and progressively surrounding the minute repeater movement. When struck by the hammers, they vibrate, thus producing the sounds.
The repeating mechanism represents the ability of a watch to acoustically tell the time by striking small hammers onto gongs surrounding the movement (early examples onto a bell in the case back). Time can be deducted from the number and combination of the chimes. The repeating function features different options, the very first being the simple hour repeater which would strike the elapsed hours only. Following the success of such devices, an incremental array of repeaters were developed: the quarter repeater, striking the elapsed hours and quarters of an hour, the half quarter repeater, improved by telling the elapsed half quarters as well; the five minute repeater; and the final evolution: the minute repeater which indicates the precise time to the minute.
Always made in small numbers, the development and realization of the complex minute repeating mechanism was and still is a challenge for watchmakers. A momentous achievement in the past, this complication is regarded one of the pinnacles of watchmaking, produced in extremely limited quantities and always considered as the top end of the production of a firm or a watchmaker.