Historically interesting Swiss rose gold lever watch Circa 1900

Rose gold pocket watch by Ernst Kutter
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A historically interesting Swiss 14 carat rose gold open faced lever pocket watch, circa 1900. Sold by Ernst Kutter in Stuttgart, Germany. LeCoultre bridge movement, a piston tooth lever escapement, gold screw compensation balance and balance cock with the unusual inscription Early/Late. White enamel dial with Arabic hours, outer minute divisions, sunk subsidiary seconds at 6 o’clock and spade & whip hands. The plain case with monogram MM for Max Müller on the back. Dial signed, case numbered. Comes with the original presentation box.
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Diameter: 51 mm
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Weight: 75 g
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Signed: Ernst Kutter Stuttgart
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This interesting pocket watch comes from a family estate. It was owned by German consular officer Max Müller, whose monogram MM is engraved on the back cover of the case. He was born in Stuttgart in 1879, went to the Foreign Office and was posted to China in 1904. From 1906, he was vice consul in Shanghai and in 1910 he became consul in Hankow. When World War I broke out, Müller returned to Germany in 1914 and came to Graz in 1919. In 1928, he was transferred to England and was consul there until 1935. Due to his distance from National Socialism, he was replaced. Müller never recovered from this disappointment and died in 1950.
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Born in Sulz am Neckar in 1824, Ernst Kutter was a versatile watchmaker who had trained with Matthias Hipp in Reutlingen, among others. He built pocket watches and precision pendulum clocks that were used, for example, in the observatories in Neuchâtel, Vienna and Geneva. Fridtjof Nansen, the first to cross Greenland from east to west in 1888, used Kutter’s deck chronometer No. 24 on his expedition. In 1904, Ernst Kutter handed over his business to two of his employees, he died in 1905. The business founded by his father in law in Stuttgart in 1825 still exists today.