Swiss gold skeletonized watch with dead centre seconds Circa 1820

Gold lever on both sides glazed
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A very fine and extremely unusual Swiss, silver and gold skeletonized pocket watch with dead centre seconds, circa 1820. Seconds beating balance, variation of Pouzait’s lever escapement, skeletonized regulator dial and date. Glazed on both sides, polished gold bezels, pendant and bow, silver engine turned band. Skeletonized dial, regulator type with silvered annular chapter rings for the hours and minutes with radial Roman numerals, date from 1-31, outer seconds with dot divisions and Arabic quarter minute numerals. Blued steel Breguet hands.
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A frosted gilt full plate movement, turned concave pillars, fusee with chain, polished steel lever escapement mounted in the centre of the dial plate, counterpoised lever with opposing rack acting on a pinion with a pirouette wheel meshing with the balance wheel pinion, seconds beating three arm polished steel balance, the flat balance spring on the pirouette wheel, escapement partially jewelled, engraved gilt bridge, index regulator. Property of an Italian Gentleman.
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Diameter: 56 mm
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Signed: No name
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The present watch has an interesting variation of the Pouzait escapement with a seconds-beating balance to allow dead centre seconds, but unlike the Pouzait escapement, the balance is small and without a balance spring. A pirouette wheel with a balance spring meshes with the balance pinion, this wheel is driven by a toothed rack at one end of the lever and the escape wheel is set in the centre of the dial plate. This watch has the additional feature of a calendar and the skeletonized regulator dial and bicolour case is visually very appealing. Pouzait Escapement. During the last quarter of the 18th century, several watchmakers tried to produce watches with dead centre seconds hands, much in favour among the scientific community and on the Chinese market.
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The attempt made by Moise Pouzait featured a lever escapement associated with a large seconds beating balance. Due to its spectacular aspect, and in spite of its inertia sensitivity, Pouzait’s escapement was much appreciated by the Chinese, before the invention by Jacot of the so called Chinese duplex escapement, enabling the production of dead centre seconds watches. In 1786 Pouzait made a model of his escapement which he presented to the Geneva Societe des Arts, and which can still be seen in their collection. The idea seems to derive from the pin wheel escapement in clocks and as in the pin wheel, there was no safety action (later ones have the safety action). There are some differences: Pouzait’s pallets are not just pins, they are small pin like rectangular teeth, so in fact, it is an escapement with a divided lift. Pouzait, who eleven years earlier had invented the independent second’s mechanism, possibly wanted to make a simpler mechanism for dead seconds. Whatever his motives, he was one of the first to introduce the lever escapement to the Continent.