{"title":"Breguet","description":"Breguet watches, from the house that gave horology the tourbillon, the overcoil and the self-winding watch. Lepine gold, guilloche enamel, a revival perpetuelle and the first Marine, several confirmed by Breguet's own archive records.","products":[{"product_id":"no-1852-authenticated-by-breguets-patrimony-1914","title":"No. 1852, Confirmed by Breguet's Archive Records, 1914","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA genuine Breguet pendant watch of 1914, its 18ct gold case worked in royal-blue guilloche enamel and centred with a rose-cut diamond rosette. Confirmed by Breguet's Patrimony department from its own archive records, with documented Paris provenance and its original matching enamel-and-pearl chain.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA pendant watch of 26.7mm, small enough to sit in the hollow of a palm, and finished the way only a great Paris house finishes small things. The back is translucent royal-blue enamel over engine-turning, held inside a white enamel border, and at its centre sits a pinwheel rosette of rose-cut diamonds. The bezel repeats the blue and white around a gilt engine-turned dial with Breguet Arabic numerals and blued steel Breguet hands, the open-ring pattern the house itself invented. Everything about it was made to be worn against dark fabric on a long chain, and the chain is still here: the original sautoir of slender blue enamel batons spaced with seed pearls, closed by a diamond-set clasp. Chains of this kind are nearly always lost or separated over a century; a matching original changes what the piece is.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is a Breguet of the Brown era, made in Paris and sold from the maison's salon at 2 rue Édouard VII in the spring of 1914. The house's registers record the sale, and the watch's return for service nine years later; the entry, confirmed in writing by Breguet, is set out in The Archive below. What the object adds to the paperwork is condition: the enamel still bright with only a few tiny chips, the rosette secure though two of its smaller stones are gone, the original crystal in place, the chain showing only light wear to a few links.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor all its jewellery, it is a proper watch. The keyless bar movement winds from the crown, sets by drawing it out, and runs correctly: a full lever-escapement mechanism folded into a case not much bigger than a coat button.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePieces like this belong to a particular Paris, the last spring before the First World War, when a watch could be commissioned as a jewel and entered in a ledger by hand. This one has kept its enamel, its chain and its paper trail together for more than a century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe marks, the movement and the condition are set out piece by piece in the drawers below; the register entry is set out in The Archive.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Breguet","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54429829103955,"sku":"PW-0088","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/breguet-18ct-solid-gold-with-royal-blue-guilloch-and-white-enamel-pocket-watch-1_Hero_96893213-8e24-4964-b0fb-560d35e622f5.jpg?v=1785287033"},{"product_id":"18ct-gold-lepine-with-a-hand-engraved-cipher-back-c-1895","title":"N° 2961, 18ct Gold Lépine with a Hand-Engraved Cipher, 1878","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAn 18ct gold keyless Lépine, Breguet N° 2961, sold in Paris on 18 October 1878. Its case number, gold cuvette and enamel dial are all recorded in the house's own sales books.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eN° 2961 is a 19-ligne keyless Lépine in 18ct gold, 49.17mm across, made in the plain, high-grade form Breguet was selling from Paris in the late 1870s: open face, white enamel dial, gold cuvette, lever escapement. It is the full gentleman's size of the period rather than a slim dress watch. The house's own books describe it simply as a watch with winding crown. In 1878 that was still a choice rather than a given; the firm had been selling key-wound gold watches only a few years before, and the fluted crown here, set on a tall pendant under a large round bow, is part of what places it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe dial follows the pattern the house used through this period: black Roman hours, Arabic numerals at every five minutes on the outer track, each marked with a dot, 60 at the top, and a sunk subsidiary seconds at six. The signature is small and pale, Breguet in script with the number 2961 beneath it. The hands are blued steel Breguet hands. The register records gold hands at the sale in 1878; the watch returned to Breguet for service several times in the 1880s, and the present pair most likely dates from one of those visits.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe back is engine-turned in a fine basket pattern, reserved at the centre for a large engraved cipher, an E among interlaced letters, framed by foliate scrolls and cut into the gold with hatched infill. It was an owner's commission rather than the maker's, and it has kept its edges. The gold cuvette beneath is engraved Breguet in a long, flourished script with N° 2961 below, and the case number 22687 is struck on the inside of the back: the same number written against the watch in the sales register in 1878.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe movement is frosted gilt, laid out in long parallel bars. The keyless work sits on top in grained steel, left unpolished against the matt gilt of the plates. It winds, sets and runs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe marks, the movement and the condition are set out in the drawers below; the watch's entry in Breguet's books is in The Record.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Breguet","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54467858301267,"sku":"PW-0115","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/breguet-18ct-gold-pocket-watch-27_hero.jpg?v=1785680042"},{"product_id":"self-winding-perpetuelle-platinum-weight-c-1930","title":"Self-Winding Perpétuelle, Platinum Weight, c.1930","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe self-winding watch Breguet invented in the 1780s, built again by the house itself a century and a half later. An 18ct gold Perpétuelle with a platinum winding weight, its running reserve read off the dial.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn open-face watch in 18ct gold, 48.34mm across and 91.1 grams in the hand, engine-turned across the bezel, the band and the hinged back that lifts to the movement, the back worked around a plain polished cartouche, with the pendant and bow left in polished gold. It is a Perpétuelle, a watch that winds itself from the motion of being carried, and that word is the whole story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSelf-winding was Abraham-Louis Breguet's founding trick, the invention that made his name in Paris in the 1780s, and for most of a century afterwards the house let it rest. Then, in 1921, Sir David Salomons published his monograph on Breguet and reminded the world, and the firm itself, of what the old man had actually done. In the years that followed, the house answered with a small run of new Perpétuelles built in honour of its own beginning, and this is one of them: No. 2176, made around 1930, bracketed in the series by No. 1648 of 1928 and No. 2492 of 1932. The movements for the run came from Les Fils de V. Piguet in the Vallée de Joux, then trusted with the most demanding complicated work in Switzerland.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe silvered dial is guilloché throughout, worked in a tighter weave at the centre than the case carries, with a plain satin band holding the Roman hours and a beaded minute track just inside it. Hours and minutes sit a little high of centre, read by blued steel hands in the moon-tipped Breguet pattern, and beneath them a separately pivoted hand sweeps an arc graduated to fifty, showing how much running reserve the motion of the day has stored. A subsidiary seconds turns in its own guilloché ring at six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the other side of the hinged back, the self-winding weight rides on its own pivot at the top of the movement, and it is cut in platinum: the densest metal for the job, on a watch whose whole purpose is that weight's quiet travel. It winds and sets correctly from the gold pendant crown, and it runs well.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe house's own registers know this watch: sold new on the 21st of February 1933 to a Monsieur Lenoir, for 10,000 francs. It has come through the ninety years since complete, matching and original, the number struck on caseback, cuvette and movement, and the caseback's central cartouche, the panel left for an owner's monogram, never engraved.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe marks, the movement and the condition are set out piece by piece in the drawers below; the register entry, confirmed by the house, is set out in The Archive.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Breguet","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54616485462355,"sku":"PW-0140","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/breguet-18ct-gold-pocket-watch-1_hero_bdbd71ed-a2e9-407e-8110-12060fd509dc.jpg?v=1787071824"},{"product_id":"breguet-marine-3400sa-steel-gold-guilloche","title":"Marine 3400SA in Steel and Gold, Hand-Guilloché Dial, c.1994-1995","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe first Breguet Marine, ref. 3400SA, in steel with an 18ct gold bezel and fluted gold caseband, its hand-guilloché dial numbered 3714 to match the case. Complete on its original two-tone Marine bracelet, with its box and certificate.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 3400 is the original Breguet Marine: a 35.5mm automatic with date and centre seconds that put the house's classical details into a sporting case. It was introduced with the collection in 1990 and made until the line was redrawn in 2005. This is the steel and gold version, the 3400SA, from the first half of that run.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe case is what sets it apart from Breguet's dress watches. A pair of steel guards stands out from the right flank to shield the crown, and the band of the case is fluted along its full circumference, the coin-edge finish Breguet also gives its Classique cases. Here the fluted band and the stepped bezel above it are 18ct yellow gold, set against a steel case body, steel guards and a steel back, and the fluting carries on across the steel at each end of the case where the bracelet is fitted. The steel crown between the guards is capped with the Breguet rosette.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe dial is the other half of it. Breguet kept the hand engine-turning of its dress watches for the Marine, and the dial says so at six: Swiss Guilloché Main. The turned centre sits inside a plain silvered chapter ring with black Roman numerals, a dotted minute track and a beaded gold edge, and the date window takes the place of the VI. Blued Breguet pomme hands and a blued centre seconds, and at the top of the dial the signature with the watch's own number, 3714. It is clean, with the print sharp and the turning crisp.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is on the original Breguet Marine bracelet in the same two metals: rows of brushed steel links joined by polished gold, gold edge links down each side, and a folding clasp closed by a gold cover signed Breguet. The gold of the bezel and caseband is picked up link by link along its length.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 3400 was also made in solid yellow and white gold. The steel and gold version keeps the same dial and the same fluted gold at the edge of the case, set on steel. This example has all of it: the numbered hand-turned dial, the gold fluting and bezel, the crown guards and the complete two-tone bracelet, and it still has the box and certificate it was sold with. The marks, the movement and the condition are set out in the drawers below.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Breguet","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55116198478163,"sku":"WW-0003","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/breguet-marine-3400sa-steel-gold-1_578fd084-483a-43bf-8de9-12ffb9962459.jpg?v=1790775023"}],"url":"https:\/\/estatecollection.nl\/collections\/shop-by-maker-breguet.oembed","provider":"The Estate Collection","version":"1.0","type":"link"}