Fine French gold quarter repeating à toc pocket watch Circa 1770

Gold hunting cased pocket watch
–
A fine and rare French Louis XV, 18K gold quarter repeating à toc pocket watch, circa 1770. Accompanied by a fancy gold key. The case is engraved with a basketweave pattern, the back with radial line decoration, bezel engraved to match. White enamel dial, radial Roman numerals, outer minute track and Arabic five-minute numerals and gold Louis hands. A hinged, gilt brass full plate movement, cylindrical pillars, fusee and chain, verge escapement, plain three-arm brass balance with blued steel flat balance spring, continental cock pierced and engraved with scrolls, rack and pinion regulator with silver plate, repeating on the inside of the case activated by depressing the pendant. Dial and movement signed, further signed on the dial plate edge.
–
Diameter: 45 mm
–
Signed: Lepaute  Paris
–
Lepaute is one of the most eminent families of Paris watch and clockmakers from the end of the 18th century. Jean André Lepaute (born 1720), in 1749 married Nicole Reine Etable de la Brière, a very remarkable woman who was a well-known scholar, elected to the Académie des Sciences of Beziers in 1761. In 1760 he was joined by his brother, Jean Baptiste (born 1727), and in 1763 by his two nephews Pierre Henry and Pierre Bazile Lepaute. The company was chosen to build a clock with the equation of time for the City Hal as well as for Les Invalides in Paris, and a member of the family became Clockmaker to Emperor Napoléon, another to Louis Philippe and Napoléon III.
–
Montre à toc. A ‘dumb’ repeater watch in which a hammer strikes the inside of the case to produce a muffled sound. Invented by Julian Le Roy in 1740.