French decorative gold verge with matching châtelaine Circa 1760

Gold and enamel watch with open-face by Julien Le Roy
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Fine, rare and decorative French 20K gold, enamel and diamond-set open faced quarter-repeating à tac pocket watch with matching châtelaine, circa 1752.
Round-shaped case, the back polychrome enamelled with a vase of flowers, quarter repeater à tac on one bell activated by depressing the pendant. White enamel dial with radial Roman hours, outer minutes track with Arabic five-minute numerals and very fine decorative hands. Key-winding, gilded brass movement, fusee and chain, verge escapement, monometallic balance, blued steel flat hairspring. Movement signed. Accompanied by a contemporary 20K yellow gold and enamel chatelaine.
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Diameter: 46 mm
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Signed: Julien Le Roy
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A very fine example of a probably Genevan watch bearing the apocryphal signature of one of the most famous Parisian watchmakers of the time. On the chatelaine, several French stamps of metal control are punched hache, le fer à droite (in English – axe, with its iron on the right side) an old gold check stamp used between 1798 and 1819 and ET in a horizontal rectangular stamp, an old gold check stamp especially used for goods at auction.
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Julien Le Roy is one of the clockmakers who contributed most to the progress and the reputation of French watch- and clockmaking. Born in Tours on August 6, 1686, and died in 1759 in Paris. He came to Paris in 1699. In 1713 he achieved his master’s degree and in the following years, he became a jury member of the Paris Guild of Watchmakers. Later, Le Roy became director of the Société des Arts de Genève and, in 1739, Court Watchmaker (French Horloger Ordinaire du Roi) under Louis XV, he had his private quarters in the Louvre. He improved almost all branches of clockmaking and many important inventions in the realm of time measurement are owed to him. In 1717, Julien Le Roy presented an equation clock to the Royal Academy of Sciences which showed the true time, the place of the sun and its decline. His most important discoveries concerned watch mechanisms. The adjustable ‘potence’ for the verge escape wheel considerably improved the escapement’s functioning and the steel end-piece (coqueret) which allowed oil to be retained in the balance pivots in order to diminish frictional force, was quickly adopted by other watchmakers. He was the inventor of dumb repeating watches too, in 1740, he created a new arrangement that allowed the area allotted to the repeating work to be enlarged. This invention, called ‘à bâte levée’, was also adopted by his fellow clockmakers. In 1755 he invented a small anchor escapement used as a regulator for the repeating train. He contributed to the Encyclopédie by writing several articles on clockmaking together with his son Jean-Baptiste, the Academician. Le Roy ran his workshop in the Rue de Harlay in Paris until his death. Examples of his timepieces can be found in various important museums around the world, such as the Louvre and the Victoria and Albert Museum.