Picked up a Swiss Watch that someone may know something about. It is not running and will probably be too much to fix unless it is more than common.

Movement

Case marking

Looks like silver but I can't make out the mark

Mike

Besancon (France) was once the capital watchmaking city of france. 1874 12% of watches worldwide and 1880 90 % of the french watches were made there. The watchmakers came from Switzerland and ther were always close relationships of the swisse and french watchmaking industrie. 1910 there were about 100 companies working on watches including dial-making, case-making and engraving. The most known name from this region is Lip.

Louis-Joseph Fernier (1815-1879) founded the watchmaking company 'L(ouis) Fernier & freres (Besancon and Paris). I think they started with carriage clocks and then went over to pocket watches and i do not know what part of the watchmaking was really performed by this company.

The watch shown is a mid quality 15-17 j watch ca 1910 (the inscription shows that this model was awarded with a price at the world's fair 1906 at Milan), case is silver. The only non-common fact es the covered winding part with the small windows showing the interaction of the wheels.
With the problems like a missing stem and not runing it would make no sense to spend much money for repair unless it is a family heirloom, - a running but dirty watch would be nice to clean-up.

Regards
Gerald

Thanks Gerald, I will probably put it up for sale. If anyone wants it let me know and I'll sell it here. Otherwise it will eventually end up on the 'bay. That is a very nice reply with a bit of interesting history. Too bad it's as far gone as it is.