Please Help me Identify this "Ol Courvoisier Renan" pocket watch, level of quality, and likely date and place of origin. I have owned several other "Courvoisier" watches from the 1700s and early 1800s in the past. One was a Courvoisier & Houriet from Le Locle and few others were from Courvoisier Freres in Le Locle. How does this Courvoisier firm related to the others? In my several books on old watches I could just not find this one. The watch is 35mm in diameter, 19 jewels, and in an extremely well preserved 18K gold hunting case. It comes with a vintage key and sets nicely and runs strong and keeps time. Cover snaps shut perfectly & lift spring works properly. Photos of the watch are at this link:
Ol Courvoisier Renan Pocket Watch

Thanks so much!

John,
thanks for posting photo's of your watch, and apologies for my late input.

Renan is in Switzerland about 12 miles from Le Locle, and a mere spit away from La Chaux de Fonds (about 5 miles), all well known watchmaking areas.
Given the proximity of Renan to Le Locle, I can see a strong possibility of a family link between your Courvoisier famlies - but you'd need to get into some serious genealogy research to prove it.

The movement itself started life as a bar movement which is very common in Swiss watches - the ebauches were bought in raw by watchmakers who then finished them in their own flavour - and yours does have a bit of unusual flavour at that!

The Gold cappped jewels on the escape wheel and Pallet cocks are a neat and unusual touch.
The train wheels appear either solid Gold(?) or plated, but wouldn't like to guess which! They could even be of some alloy or maybe just tarnished - can't really tell from the photo's.

The screwed in hairspring stud is a tad out of the ordinary too.

The fact that he's had the engraver make a statement regarding the 'straight line lever' suggests it was a fairly new arrangement at the time as he's made a feature of it, so will help date the watch - practically every lever watch produced from early 1900's has a straight lever, Swiss or American.
The alternative was a 'side lever', more commonly seen in the English Lever type movements.
I had a heck of a job actually finding a Swiss version at one time, which I eventually found in a Longines.

The lever in your watch also has shellacked pallet stones, and the whole lot is set in sinks in the dial plate to keep the movement height down.

I'm guessing from all the quality tweaks, it will probably have Geneva stopwork fitted under the mainspring barrel to prevent damage to the mechanism - you can tell if this is working because the winder will suddenly lock solid rather than feel as if it's compressing the spring when fully wound.
If it doesn't lock, the pip has probably broken off the finger, which is a very common defect, so take care when winding.

Check too the mainspring barrel pivot area for wear, (gently rock the barrel with pegwood to see how much it rocks) the only support for the barrel is the bridge, and that is cut back close to the pivot hole to clear the ratchet.
It really is the achilles heel of this type movement and a real fiddle to bush and repair!
When this area is badly worn, the barrel tilts and rubs the underside of the centre wheel and bridge, eventually stopping the watch until fixed.

Other comments!
It has a cut bi metalic compensation balance with timing screws, flat hairspring (either pre Breguet overcoil or a tweak too far maybe) and the hands are described as 'Breguet' style.

Is that a hairline crack in the dial enamel BTW, or a hair?
If cracked, it was probably caused by some oaf heaving too hard on a dial foot retaining screw when refitting the dial.

Nice watch, I like it.

Best regards

John

thanks for all the info again here John!