Masterworks of Time: Splendours for the East 「時間傑作:西器東傳」

Masterworks of Time: Splendours for the East 「時間傑作:西器東傳」

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 548. A FINE GOLD AND ENAMEL OPEN-FACED QUARTER REPEATING 'BARKING DOG' AUTOMATON WATCH CIRCA 1815, NO. 7 [ 黃金飾琺瑯二問懷錶飾動物活動場景,年份約1815,編號7].

The Barking Dog

Piguet & Meylan

A FINE GOLD AND ENAMEL OPEN-FACED QUARTER REPEATING 'BARKING DOG' AUTOMATON WATCH CIRCA 1815, NO. 7 [ 黃金飾琺瑯二問懷錶飾動物活動場景,年份約1815,編號7]

Lot Closed

November 12, 03:49 PM GMT

Estimate

25,000 - 35,000 CHF

Lot Details

Description

The Barking Dog

Piguet & Meylan


A FINE GOLD AND ENAMEL OPEN-FACED QUARTER REPEATING 'BARKING DOG' AUTOMATON WATCH

CIRCA 1815, NO. 7

[ 黃金飾琺瑯二問懷錶飾動物活動場景,年份約1815,編號7]


Movement: gilded asymmetrical half plate movement, cylinder escapement, three-arm gold balance, plunge repeat activating the quarter repeating and the bellows for the 'barking dog', gilt-metal cuvette with apertures for winding and hand-setting, movement main plate beneath dial scratch signed par J D Piguet et S Meylan à Genève, ferrer Akaina, indistinctly stamped P & [?] and numbered 7

Dial: eccentric white enamel dial, Arabic numerals, translucent blue enamel background over engine-turning, vari-coloured gold scene of a dog barking at a swan, the dog's head raises and lowers while barking the hours and quarters

Case: gold, the back engine-turned, milled band, locking slide lacking to right of pendant, vent for bellows below 6 o'clock, case back separately stamped FO [probably Frères Oltramere] and PC 


diameter 55mm


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A very rare form of repeating watch, the sound of the ‘Barking Dog’ is ingeniously reproduced by a set of bellows activated by depressing the pendant, thus also marking the hours and quarters. To achieve the sound, the mechanism exerts a sharp pressure on a miniature bellows connected to a whistle vented through an aperture which simultaneously opens to the lower edge of the case.


Just over 20 ‘Barking Dog’ automata watches are known. Watches featuring a barking dog automaton were usually produced with a dog barking at a swan or cat. The bird and swan theme is believed to have been based on paintings from the 1740s by Jean Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755) while the scene of a dog barking at a cat was most likely based on a design by the painter Johann Wenzel Peter (1745-1829). Such scenes were also translated onto gold boxes by mosaicists such as Domenico Moglia (1780-1862). It is not inconceivable that Piguet & Meylan were aware of these fashionable mosaics, since many were bought as plaques by travellers on the Grand Tour and mounted by Geneva gold box makers.


For two other barking dog watches by Piguet Meylan, numbered 134 and 140 and with cases by Frères Oltramere, see: P. Friess, Patek Philippe Museum, The Emergence of the Portable Watch Vol. IV, pp. 56-57. Interestingly the two aforementioned watches are also scratch engraved 'par J D Piguet et S Meylan à Genève' in exactly the same position on the main plate as the present watch - indeed, the scratch engraving appears to have been executed by the same hand and in the same manner as that on the present watch.