French ornamental gold and enamel verge watch Circa 1760

Open faced pocket watch with weekday and date indicator
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A French ornamental 20K gold and enamel open faced verge pocket watch with the indication of the days of the week and date, circa 1760.
The case back with a polychrome enamel pastoral scene on a white ground, the inside of the back lid is decorated with a flower arrangement of peonies and lilies, the inner and outer bezels with landscape motifs and flowers, the decor is intended to imitate the Meissen porcelain which was enormously popular at the time. White enamel dial with Roman hours, outer Arabic five minute numerals, an inner track with weekday indication in French and outermost Arabic numerals for the date. Signed full plate movement, chain and fusee, three arm brass balance.
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Diameter: 47 mm
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Weight: 88 g
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Signed: Julien Le Roy à Paris
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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.
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Meißen is a municipality and place 25 km northwest of Dresden, in the German state of Saxony. It is the Kreisstadt of the Landkreis Meissen. The settlement was formed at a bend in the Elbe and is first mentioned at the end of the 9th century. A Gothic cathedral arose on the steep castle hill in the thirteenth century, which was embellished in the nineteenth century with two iconic towers. At the end of the fifteenth century, the Albrechtsburg was built next to it, the first castle in Germany that was not built as a fortress, intended as a residence for the dukes of Saxony. In 1710, Johann Friedrich Böttger started in the Albrechtsburg with the manufacture of the famous Meissen porcelain, which more than anything else has made the name Meissen world famous.