52 29th May 2010
international events
Rediscovered– the life and times of the world’s top watchmaker
■ Lost Breguet archive surfaces in Geneva to bring £1.4m
■ Sales in Heidelberg and Munich auger well for season
Jonathan Franks
reports
£1 = €1.15/SFr1.60
AN undiscovered historical treasure trove of significant horological importance was the runaway highlight of a sale held by the specialist clock and watch seller Patrizzi
(no buyer’s premium)in
Geneva last month.
At some time in the 1920s, a valued customer at the prestigious watchmaking firm of Breguet in Paris asked George Brown, the then owner, if he could have a box of manuscripts sitting in Brown’s office. Without a second thought, Brown handed it over.
Since that time, the box has remained in the family of the customer’s descendants, who only recently decided to have a closer look at its contents and brought them to Osvaldo Patrizzi for an expert appraisal.
The documents were nothing less than the written legacy of one of the most accomplished watchmakers and clockmakers of all times – Abraham-Louis Breguet.
Between 1818 and his death in 1823,
Breguet dictated his technical memoirs to his close collaborator, Louis Moinet, then revised the texts with numerous additions and corrections. The final product was due to be published, but after Breguet’s death Moinet ran off with the manuscripts and it was only after a long legal battle that
Right: leaves from the notes which Abraham-Louis Breguet compiled nearly 200 years ago and found locked away in a box before selling at SFr2.3m (£1.4m) at Patrizzi’s auction in Geneva.
Above: offered at Metz’s Heidelberg sale, the Swan service tazza, left, took €64,000 (£55,470) and the Meissen armorial bowl €50,000 (£43,350).
East Europeans drive bids on rarer Meissen
WHILE demand seems to have slowed for minor German porcelain and ceramic manufacturers, specialist auctioneer Metz (23% buyer’s premium) in Heidelberg had no cause for complaint when it came to selling Meissen at their sale on April 23-24.
The demand for rarer pieces is very much driven by
Eastern European dealers and collectors and, even in the lower price regions, there is still healthy competition among German bidders. There was a great deal of interest in an armorial bowl with saucer, dated 1735 and decorated with chinoiserie motifs and the coat of arms of Clemens August of Bavaria, the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne. It was estimated at €36,000, but finally went to an Eastern European collector at €50,000 (£43,350). In
Antoine-Louis, Breguet’s son, managed to reclaim them.
He, too, however, died before they could be published and since the late 1850s the manuscripts have been untraceable.
The papers – more than 350 pages in all – include descriptions and diagrams of many of the master’s ingenious inventions such as the tourbillon and the repetition mechanism he developed for his self- winding watches.
Other chapters deal with marine
November last year, Bonhams sold a two-handled beaker and saucer from the same Clemens August service for £51,000 as part of their auction of the Hoffmeister Collection.
At the Metz sale, an 11in (28.5cm) diameter Meissen
tazza from the celebrated Swan service, attracted even more bidders.
Some of the 2200 individual pieces, which were created between 1737 and 1742 by Johann Joachim Kaendler and Johann Friedrich Eberlein for Count Heinrich von Brühl, are comparatively common. Others, such as this tazza, which can be dated to 1738, are much rarer. The bidding started at €36,000 and the hammer fell at €64,000 (£55,470) when an Eastern European collector was outpaced by a more determined South German collector.
chronometers, calendar watches and other elements.
For the auction – held on May 7 having been postponed from April 25 due to the Icelandic ash cloud – the archive was divided into seven lots, each estimated at SFr40,000 to SFr80,000. There was major international interest and, after the seven lots had been knocked down provisionally to several different bidders, Patrizzi offered them again as one lot. After a prolonged struggle between
various unnamed telephone bidders, the Breguet Museum in Paris regained part of its heritage with a massive bid of SFr2.3m (£1.4m). Offered separately was Breguet’s passport, issued in Neuchâtel in June 1794 and providing documentary proof of when he had actually fled from Paris after the Revolution and the murder of his old friend Jean-Paul Marat.
Estimated at SFr10,000 to SFr20,000, it was finally knocked down for a substantial SFr50,000 (£30,370).
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