Very rare Swiss gold and enamel automata watch Circa 1820

Gold and enamel automata watch
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A very rare Swiss gold and enamel automata watch The Kitchen, circa 1820, gilt full plate verge movement, automaton driven by an independent movement with going barrel and wheel train, driving the automata by means of cams and levers. On the front, a white enamel dial, Arabic numerals, outer track for the minute indication, on the back coloured gold automaton scene applied over a painted enamel background depicting a kitchen: a lady at the spinning wheel by a fire over which a chicken is being roasted, a small child opposite her, in the upper right part a dog running in a rotating cage, at the right water runs from a fountain, below a dog plays with a cat by a basket of vegetables, movement attributed to Pierre Simon Gounouilhou.
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Diameter: 56.5 mm
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Signed: Attributed to Pierre Simon Gounouilhou
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The Kitchen was one of the most impressive automata watches produced in Geneva in the early 19th Century. This form of automaton watch appears to have been produced mostly by the Geneva watchmaker Gounouilhou. Fewer than a dozen ‘Kitchen’ automata are known, one such watch is illustrated in ‘Histoire et Technique de La Montre Suisse’, by E. Jaquet and A. Chapuis, 1945, and another one in ‘Le Monde des Automates’, A. Chapuis and E. Gelis, Paris, 1928.

 Pierre Simon Gounouilhou (1779-1847) was born in 1779 and settled in Geneva (Quai Neuf en l’Isle, No. 241) in 1799. Known as an imaginative maker of great repute, he produced automata, musical objects, watches and quarter-repeating ring watches. He left his shop notes with an abundance of information about the habits and customs of early 19th-century Geneva watchmakers.