Breguet

The West End is still eerily quiet and fortunately (at least for me) there were no other members of the public at the gallery allowing me free reign over the exceptional sale items coming up on the 14th of this month (I recommend a peruse through the catalogue).

The star lot (possibly of the whole auction season), lot 28, is the watch featured below: a unique 4-minute tourbillon manufactured by Breguet and sold to the King of England in 1808 via the retailer Recordon. It is not necessary for me to elucidate on the history of this watch as this can be read at length on the Sotheby's website and has been penned expertly by Alex Barter, former head of watches in London for the auction house and now a consultant for them. 

However, from a personal perspective, as someone who has been fortunate enough to visit the Salomons collection in Jerusalem and seen the Marie Antoinette (ref.160) twice, this represented a truly privileged opportunity to handle the work of possibly the most inventive horologist to have lived. And not just any work: one of the first commercially available tourbillon watches. 

I have read various discussions recently about the position of the tourbillon in modern watchmaking and why it still exists and proliferates at an ever increasing pace whilst at the same time increasing in complexity and outrageousness. Fundamentally though, the most basic and straightforward expression of an original idea is sometimes the most beautiful even if it does not appear to excite in the same fashion as the same idea expressed many years later with the advent of new technologies and creativity.