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A pocket watch of museum quality, with quarter repeater, musical movement and three automatons "The Tightrope Dancer" Dimensions 64 mm, circa 1790, Weight 209 g, Origin Schweiz Case: Later custom-made gilt case. Dial: Eccentric, gilt dial with enamel cartouches and guilloché pattern, group of figures in four-colour gold against a polychrome enamel background. Movm.: Bridge movement, 2 barrels, duplex escapement, three-arm brass balance, musical movement with barrel and pin barrel, planetary gearing set under the platform commanding the dancers' rotation. The automaton scene shows an artist crafted from multi-coloured gold, dancing on a twisted wire rope. He hops on his right leg while swinging his left leg and adjusting the position of his balancing pole. The rope bends,following each of his movements. Two musicians accompany his dance: a man playing a lyre and a young woman playing a guitar. Their arms move and they are depicted against a background of a finely painted Alpine landscape featuring a lake, trees, rocks, a village, and mountains in the background. Between the musicians sits a small, eccentric guilloche dial with white enamel cartouches. Together with the "Moses" watch and the "Théâtres" watches, the "Tightrope Dancer" watches are among the rarest automatons from the Neuâtel region. No more than six examples are known to exist. Further "Tightrope Dancer" automaton watches are illustrated and described in: - Terence Camerer-Cuss, "The Sandberg Watch Collection", Geneva, 1998, pp. 194–195. - Chapuis et Gelis, "Le Monde des Automates", Paris, 1928, vol. II, p. 53, fig. 325 - Chapuis et Droz, "Les Automates", Neuchâtel, 1949, p. 184, figs. 197–199. - Sandoz Collection, also illustrated in the catalogue of the Château des Monts Du Bois et Fils The company Philippe Du Bois (1738-1808) established became famous for being one of the most important companies in the Neuchâtel area for over two centuries. Source: "Dictionnaire des Horlogers Genevois", Osvaldo Patrizzi, Geneva 1998 The Art of the Automaton in Geneva During the 1780s, Geneva opened a most intriguing chapter of horological history. The city developed, with great flair, the art of automatons: machines designed to imitate the movements of live beings or creatures. They ranged from the simplest forms, where a figure’s moving arms could point to the time, to complex, full-scale productions, such as pastoral scenes, theatre pieces or concerts. Automata were soon being used to animate a wide variety of objects, such as scent bottles, amphorae, mirrors or snuffboxes; their use as timepieces was often merely a pretext for possessing these exquisite creations. And since where there is life, there is sound, the automata were fitted with a musical mechanism. The acknowledged masters of this marriage between ornamental watches and automata included Pierre Morand, Henry Capt, Isaac Daniel Piguet and Philippe Samuel Meylan, Duchêne et Fils and Du Bois et Fils as well as the Jaquet Droz workshop in Geneva, with colleagues and successors Jean-Frédéric Leschot and Jacob Frisard. All were the brilliant creators of musical watches functioning first with chiming bells, and later with a cylinder or pin-drum that caused a comb made up of a set of blades to vibrate. These watches were especially prized in the East and during trade with Turkey and China they acquired a subtle local touch, a discreetly exotic charm that makes them easy to distinguish today. Source: La Tribune des Arts présente en exclusivité le Patek Philippe Museum.