This watch recently came in for a crystal and since it's unusually fancy and nice, I thought I would post an image of it. It's a 1/4 hour repeater with 3 automatons; 2 youngsters upstairs ringing out the hours and quarters past on bells and mother downstairs slaving away on the spinning wheel. The scene is gilt brass with painted details all set on a blued steel plate. The dial is not enamel and appears to be ivory or some kind of bone instead. Made around 1820-1830 I guess.

William

WOW!!! Really stunning,William.How about some more pics.
Roger

William

A beautiful Jacquemarts watch gentled by a White crystal.

Regards
Gerald

Thank you Roger and Gerald, this great watch has indeed been "gentled" with a proper glass crystal. It's a fairly large repeater measuring about 55mm in diameter. It was sent with a convex high dome crystal which was not original; it looked like a small clock glass that had been turned down to fit...sort of. There was glue everywhere and it did not fit. The hinged bezel is 18k gold, very thin and its crystal seat was not only shallow and damaged but when closed to the case frame, sat almost below the outer edge of the dial. A convex glass would never do unless cut from 1/2 sphere, which would look ridiculous. What I needed to do was to create a "hi-emp" crystal, which is just like a mi-emp (medium empire) but higher.

Since this isn't the "how to" section of the forum, I'll spare the details of how I made this crystal but I started with this: A square piece of 1.2mm low iron drawn sheet, cut to a 56mm circle...

...and ended up with this. It matches the overall case profile quite nicely, gives the minute hand plenty of clearance and serves as a nearly flat window for one to view the intricate mechanized theater on the dial beneath. The new crystal is as original or very close. The glass used for this crystal was made by Electroverre in Ramont Switzerland and is beautiful material, perfectly suited for this work.

William

Jaw dropping watch....and crystal work! WELL done!

HIGH regard! Mark

Here's a picture of the movement.

Closeup of hand work.

The winding/setting key fits this small square which is used to control the speed of the action and chiming. This little adjustment must have been fun to play with on similar watches that depict erotic scenes...if you know what I mean!

William