French gold, enamel and diamond set à tact watch Circa 1810

Gold fine enamelled pocket watch
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A very fine and rare French gold, enamel and diamond set à tact pocket watch, circa 1810. Both covers of the case are profusely engine turned and translucent cobalt blue enamelled. It has a reeded band with gold touch studs, and the reverse has an applied revolving white gold and diamond set arrow shaped pointer indicating the hours. The signed small eccentric silver dial features Arabic numerals and a single blued arrow shaped hand. The key wind Lépine caliber movement is fitted with a going barrel, cylinder escapement and three arm brass balance.
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Diameter: 42 mm
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Weight: 65 g
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Signed: Le Roy à Paris
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Breguet was the first watchmaker to design this kind of watch. He sold the first one in early 1799 to Madame Betancourt, the wife of his best friend.
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He made the watches in different variations, some with quite large touch pieces, like the present watch, and some with small ones.
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Breguet made these pieces for his wealthiest customers, and priced them between 10,000 and 15,000 francs. This was an enormous sum of money in the early 19th century. Nevertheless, the watches were highly sought after. At the time, one of the reasons for their popularity was that it was considered quite unseemly to read the time in public. These pieces made it possible to tell the time without taking the watch out of one’s pocket.
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Breguet remained almost the only one to create montre à tact watches, only Le Roy in Paris and very few others followed in his footsteps. Le Roy made a number of such watches, his most exquisite one was created for the Prince of Hesse and has diamond touch pieces.