Pocket Watches · Pocket watch
Arsa by Auguste Reymond SA pocket watch, circa 1930
- Maker / attribution
- ARSA by Auguste Reymond SA (brand / maker)
- Date
- c. 1930
- Historical period
- Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Pocket watch
- Materials / technique
- 18k yellow gold
- Dimensions
- diameter 50.3 mm
- Auction house
- Antiquorum auction archive, Geneva
- Lot
- Lot 343-7
- Credit line
- Auction lot record: LOT 7, Hong Kong, October 14, 2021
- Catalogue title (original)
- ARSA by Auguste Reymond S.A. Pocket watch; “Chronomètre”; 18K yellow gold (English)
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Record summary
Catalogued by Antiquorum auction archive, Geneva (lot Lot 343-7), this is a pocket watch by ARSA by Auguste Reymond SA, dated c. 1930. The Atlas places it in the Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking period (1900 – 1945) of its Pocket Watches collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: 18k yellow gold. Recorded dimensions: diameter 50.3 mm. The record is illustrated with 2 photographs.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Antiquorum catalogue description
18K yellow gold, open-face, keyless-winding, round-shaped, pocket watch, with subsidiary seconds at 6.Case-back polished; cuvette (dome) engraved in taille-douce (fine cut) with the mention “A Monsieur / Abel Vuilleumier / pour 30 ans de fidèles et / loyaux services / A. Reymond S.A. / Tramelan” (To Mr. Abel Vuilleumier for 30 years of faithful and loyal service, A. Reymond S.A., Tramelan).White enamel dial, with suspended “Breguet” numerals; blued steel “Breguet” hands.Movement 18’’’, rhodium-plated, going barrel, straight-line lever escapement, cut bimetallic compensated balance with gold poising screws and blued steel hairspring with terminal curve, polished steel index-regulator.
Lot specifications (Antiquorum)
Model: “Chronomètre”; Movement No.: 19 401; Case No.: 25 357 (by Charles Kohli, Tramelan); Material: 18K yellow gold; Caliber: 18’’’, straight-line lever escapement; Diameter: 50.3 mm.; Weight: 77 gr. (approx.); Signature: dial, case and movement
Inscriptions & marks
dial, case and movement
Historical context
Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
The wristwatch displaces the pocket watch; waterproof cases, self-winding and grand complications.
The pocket watch reached technical maturity and then began to give way to the wristwatch after the First World War. Complicated watches for collectors such as Henry Graves Jr. and James Ward Packard, railroad watches, and slim Art Deco dress watches are characteristic.
Read the period in the timelineMore pocket watches from this periodEarlier: Industrial Revolution
Atlas type guide
Pocket chronometers and precision watches
A pocket chronometer is a watch built to observatory standards, traditionally with a detent escapement like a marine chronometer. English makers such as John Arnold and Thomas Earnshaw made the first pocket chronometers in the 1780s. In the nineteenth century the term increasingly referred to any watch that had passed official rating trials at observatories in Kew, Neuchâtel, Geneva or Besançon, and the Swiss lever chronometer became dominant.
Tourbillon and karrusel watches belong to the same world of precision. Breguet patented the tourbillon in 1801 to average out positional errors; Bahne Bonniksen's karrusel (1892) was a cheaper English alternative. Rating certificates (bulletins de marche) that accompany such watches are historical documents in their own right.
What to look for
- Detent escapement (no pallets; a fine spring detent locks the escape wheel).
- Observatory certificates, competition results or 'Chronometer' marking on the dial.
- Tourbillon carriage visible through an aperture or on the movement.
- Fine finishing: jewelled holes in gold chatons, diamond endstones.
Dating clues
- English pocket chronometers: c. 1780–1900.
- Observatory trials at Neuchâtel from 1866, Geneva from 1873, Kew from 1884.
- Karrusels: 1892–c. 1915.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
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