  |
 |
Robb’s Report: ”Best of the Best 2011″
Best Woman’s Watch: Queen of Naples Sonnerie au Passage by Breguet
When Breguet sought to add a high-level complication to its successful Reine de Naples ladies’ watch model, its development team looked to the original watch made two centuries before. Commissioned in 1810, No. 2639-which Abraham-Louis Breguet personally delivered to Carolinde Murat, Queen of Naples – was a most remarkable timepiece. The first and only wristwatch Breguet himself ever produced, this design sported a strap made of gold thread and twisted hair and incorporated a repeating function. Because the Breguet archives did not include any details on the exact nature of the mechanism, the company’s latter-day watchmakers gave themselves some latitude in creating a design inspired historic piece. “We thought a simple sonnerie, as opposed to a grand sonnerie or minute repeater, would have put into such a watch,” says Rodolphe de Pierri, Breguet’s director of marketing and communications.
Developing the Reine de Naples Sonnerie au passage ($146,300), however, was no simple task. In past, Breguet had made a number of watches that strike, including several minuter repeaters and the Reveil du Tsar alarm watch, but a small, wrist-sized sonnerie that registers the hours for the company. Moreover, the designers needed to deploy the movement in the Reine de Naples’ diminutibe egg shaped case. “The biggest difficulty was in creating sufficient loudness in a small case,” say Alain Zaugg from Breguet’s technical office. “To do this, we had to attach the resonating gongs directly to the largest surface in the watch, which is the upper crystal.”
The owner of Breguet’s latest Reine de Naples is able not only to hear the passing hours – each of which is registered by three strikes of the watches two gongs – but also to see them. The striking hammers are visible through apertures on the mother-of-pearl dial, and the automatic movement itself, which bears an engraved dove on its upper plates, is visible through the back of the case. A button with a discreet diamond marker activates or disables the striking function.
|
The younger sister of Napoleon reigned with her husband the king, Joachim Murat, from 1808 to 1815, and the special relationship which she fostered with Breguet during this time was to give rise to the first watch specially designed to be worn on the wrist. Commissioned in 1810, paid for in 1811 and delivered in 1812, it was revolutionary in conception: an ultra-thin repeating watch, oblong in shape, equipped with a thermometer and mounted on a wristlet of hair entwined with gold thread. No difficulty was too great for Breguet to overcome in his determination to satisfy Queen Caroline, and he was to be duly rewarded. During the summer of 1813, when the European crisis was at its most acute and the firm had lost its best clients, Queen Caroline bought a further twelve watches (eight repeating and four simple) from her favourite watchmaker, thus providing a much-needed boost to the firm’s funds at a moment when it was the least expected. Caroline Murat also completed her collection with a number of thermometers and barometers and several dozen commercial watches: modestly priced pieces intended as gifts. |
With the acquisition of thirty-four clocks and watches from 1808 up to 1814, the ambitious and very beautiful Queen of Naples easily took pride of place among Breguet’s best clients.
