Swiss gold watch with automatons The Cooperage Circa 1810

Gold open faced cylinder watch by Pierre Simon Gounouilhou
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An important, gold and enamel, pearl set Swiss pocket watch with automata, circa 1810. Made for the Chinese market.
18 Carat gold case; the back cover with translucent cobalt blue and opaque black enamelling over an engine turned ground, and the bezels on the front and backside set with half pearls. Polychrome enamelling dial with automatons á quatre couleurs: two coopers beating and planing, water running from a well and a barrel during toasting; in the back, an alpine river landscape with a village and a fisherman in his boat. Peripheral white enamel dial with Arabic numerals within a translucent red enamelled border and blued hands. Fire gilt bridge movement, key wind, very fine engraved, two lavishly florally engraved barrels, cylinder escapement, three arm brass balance.
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Diameter: 56 mm
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Weight: 120 g
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Signed: Pierre Simon Gounouilhou, Genève
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The Art of the Automaton in Geneva During the 1780s, Geneva opened a most intriguing chapter of horological history. The city developed, with great flair, the art of automatons: machines designed to imitate the movements of live beings or creatures. They ranged from the simplest forms, where a figure’s moving arms could point to the time, to complex, full scale productions, such as pastoral scenes, theatre pieces or concerts.
Automata were soon being used to animate various objects, such as scent bottles, amphorae, mirrors or snuffboxes; their use as timepieces was often merely a pretext for possessing these exquisite creations. And since where there is life, there is sound, the automata were fitted with a musical mechanism.
The acknowledged masters of this marriage between ornamental watches and automata included Pierre Morand, Henry Capt, Isaac Daniel Piguet and Philippe Samuel Meylan, and the Jaquet Droz workshop in Geneva, with colleagues and successors Jean-Frédéric Leschot and Jacob Frisard. All were the brilliant creators of musical watches functioning first with chiming bells and later with a cylinder or pin drum that caused a comb made up of blades to vibrate. These watches were especially prized in the East, and during trade with Turkey and China, they acquired a subtle local touch, a discreetly exotic charm that makes them easy to distinguish today. In the hands of the Rochat family and the Bruguier workshop, this tradition continued until 1850.