We are lovers of pocket watches because we love watchmaking in all its versions, from its origins.
Countless stories crowd around unique pieces that have marked the lives of their owners.
pocket watches They originate from the court of King Louis XI of France. The king paid 10 sous to a watchmaker who was able to build a portable watch. He liked the result so much that he appears in portraits of the time with him.
Portrait of Louis XI of France.
Louis XI of France was passionate about watchmaking, although the real precursor of what we know today as a pocket watch was the German Henlein in 1524 when he incorporated the spiral spring into his pieces, giving rise to watchmaking as we know it today. Soon the desire to own one of these machines as sign of prestige and class would spread throughout Europe.
The first cases carved with fine goldsmith work appeared in the XNUMXth century, making the new watches a different way of wearing jewelry at the time.
Nuremberg eggs.
Although pocket watches were originally designed as cylindrical pieces, the famous nuremberg eggs popularized the ovoid shape.
cylindrical clock
With the boom of the wrist watches its pocket predecessors were losing popularity until they remained in a discreet plane. Currently, the big firms continue to use their best watchmakers to design some models, in most cases, of course, with important vintage reminiscences both in their aesthetics and in their calibres.
The queen who could never enjoy her watch
If there is a curious story about a pocket watch, that is undoubtedly the one told about the one of Marie Antoinette.
Execution of Marie Antoinette.
A mysterious gentleman orders a watch that the queen could wear from one of the best watchmakers of the moment, Breguet. This order I had no budget or time limit and it had to match her royalty in beauty and sophistication. He had to chime every hour and a quarter of an hour, have an instrument that measured temperature, a calendar including leap years, and be delicate but robust at the same time.
Queen Marie Antoinette.
Unfortunately, the guillotine meant that the queen did not arrive in time to receive such a magnificent gift that ended up being finished. 44 years later at the hands of the watchmaker's son.
The piece ended up in a museum along with other watch pieces which were stolen in an important robbery in 1983. Until 2005 it was not possible to recover it, being in the possession of the thief's wife who confessed his crime to him before passing away.
Hayek, posing with the Grande Complication 1160.
Shortly before its appearance, the head of the Swatch Group, Nicolas G. Hayek, obsessed with the beauty of the piece, decided to reproduce it and commissioned the Breguet firm to use archives, notes and drawings from the time for the technical part. and aesthetics of the piece, which was a real challenge, giving rise to the Grande Complication 1160.
In 2017, the BBC released a documentary called The incredible story of Marie Antoinette's watch with Nicholas Parsons, which tells the story of the famous watch commissioned by Queen Marie Antoinette, but which never came into her hands. Instead, it was stolen during the French Revolution and passed through the hands of different owners, including a grave robber and an auto magnate. The watch's history is an intriguing mix of politics, war and adventure, and the documentary offers fascinating insight into its journey through time.
Do you know any curious story about watches?
