French watch Breguet ‘Montre de Souscription’ Circa 1799

Pocket watch with original Breguet certificate and ratchet key
–
A French important and large Breguet Souscription with original certificate and original ratchet key, circa 1799.
Sold to Monsieur Dollfus on 30 Pluviose An 7 (= 18th of February 1799) for 648 Francs, this is the last known Souscription watch of the pre-series examples.
This watch consist a silver/gold, engine-turned, reeded band case with case maker punch mark “GM” (Guillaume Mermillod), an enamel dial with secret signature below “12”: “Souscription No. 415 Breguet”. It has a bridge movement, a “overhanging” ruby cylinder escapement, a three-arm brass balance, a blued balance spring with temperature compensation a shock protection-“parachute” and is keywind.
–
Diameter: 62 mm
–
Weight: 133 g
–
Signed: Abraham Louis Breguet, Paris
–
This watch is illustrated and described in Montres de souscription et tact de Breguet, by Georges Rigot, page 37.
–
“Breguet’s Souscription watches”
Usually in silver, with the gold rims being the only decoration, the souscription watches were of a large diameter allowing the enamel dial to be divided in such a way that both hours and minutes could be read from a single hand. The movements had a single plate, the spring barrel mounted in the centre and the wheels elegantly positioned and retained by bridges. The single hand was driven directly off the barrel arbor, eliminating the motion work and the intendant friction, and the ruby cylinder escapement was fitted with a parachute (shock protector) and a compensation curb to assist in correcting temperature errors; features that were the norm for all of Breguet’s first class watches. To further reduce the selling price, Breguet decided to produce these watches in small series (between 12 and 20 examples at a time), with the buyers paying an account of 25% in advance and the balance on completion. Hence the term: de souscription (by subscription). The success of these watches enabled Breguet to both reestablish his business, which had understandably been badly affected by the French Revolution and his exile in Switzerland, and to finance much of his research into other areas of horology.