Swiss gold watch made for the Chinese market Circa 1810

Gold dead centre seconds lever watch
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A very fine and very rare Swiss, 18 Carat pink gold, centre dead seconds watch with Pouzait escapement, date, eccentric dial and diamond set balance wheel, circa 1810. Made for the Chinese market. Case glazed on both sides. Gilt brass dust ring. White enamel dial, the eccentric radial Roman chapter set in the lower half with outer minute divisions and Arabic 15 minute numerals, winding aperture, subsidiary date dial at 12 o’clock, centre seconds with outermost divisions and 15 second Arabic numerals. Gold beetle and poker hour and minute hands, blued steel date and second hands. Gilt brass full plate, fixed barrel, slow beat Pouzait lever escapement with large diamond set balance with four spiral arms set on the backplate, index regulator.
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Diameter: 59 mm
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Signed: No Name
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Pouzait (also Pouzzait or Puzait, 1743-1793) In 1786 Jean Moyse Pouzait presented a model of his lever escapement to the Geneva Society of Arts. The idea seems to derive from the pin wheel escapement in clocks and as in pin wheel, there was no safety action (later ones, including the present watch, have the safety action). There are some differences, Pouzait’s pallets being not just pins, but small pin like rectangular teeth so that this is in fact an escapement with a divided lift. Pouzait, who eleven years earlier had invented the independent second’s mechanism, possibly wanted to make a simpler dead seconds mechanism. Whatever his motives were, he was one of the first to introduce the lever escapement to the Continent.