Swiss pink gold quarter repeating pocket watch Circa 1840

Gold pocket watch with key and pouch
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A Swiss 18K pink gold quarter repeating pocket watch, circa 1840. Accompanied by a key and pouch. The entire back, bezel and band with engine-turned decoration and engraved hinged cuvette. Guilloché silver dial with painted radial Roman numerals, outer minute ring, sunk subsidiary seconds dial at 3 o’clock and pink gold Breguet hands. Frosted gilt movement with cylinder escapement, three arm balance, flat balance spring, index regulator and repeating with two polished steel hammers on two gongs activated by depressing the pendant.
Signed on the cuvette.
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Diameter: 43 mm
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Signed: Vacheron & Constantin  Swiss
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The combination of a quarter-repeating mechanism with eccentric seconds is an extremely rare variation for Vacheron & Constantin.
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Jean-Marc Vacheron was born in 1731 and died in 1805. He founded a watch workshop in the Geneva district of Saint Gervais in 1755. In 1785, his son Abraham took over the then-still-small company. Their watches were favoured by the nobility, clergy and wealthy merchants. Sales deteriorated dramatically during the French Revolution, and Abraham found himself confronted with numerous problems. He married and attached to his name, according to tradition, his wife’s surname. The name of the workshop was changed to Vacheron-Girod. At the beginning of the 19th Century, Abraham’s son Jacques Barthélemy Vacheron took over management of the company, which changed the name to Vacheron-Chossat. On numerous business trips to Italy, France and Germany, Jacques Barthélemy found new customers for their sophisticated products, including pocket watches with very flat movements for the time, hunting-cased watches and minute repeaters built into expensive and elegant cases.
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In 1819, Vacheron brought in the son of a cloth merchant, François Constantin, as a partner to support the distribution of watches and the company became known as Vacheron & Constantin. Constantin had gained his first experience in the watch industry as a salesman for Jean-François Bautte, and his exceptional abilities soon overcame the company’s previous financial difficulties. Sales figures rose significantly, and Vacheron & Constantin began selling in New York by Jean Magnin and in New Orleans by Brey by 1830. In 1970, the ‘&’ was taken from the name; henceforth, the company was called Vacheron Constantin. It is the oldest continually active watch manufacturer in the world. The brand logo is the Maltese cross. Today, Vacheron Constantin is part of the Richemont group.