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The Encyclopedia of Horology

Grande complication pocket watch · France

Breguet No. 160 'Marie-Antoinette'

Partially verified

Reportedly commissioned by an admirer of Marie-Antoinette with instructions to use gold wherever possible and to include every complication then known, though the details and even the identity of the commissioner are recorded through secondary Breguet-company tradition rather than a surviving original commission letter, and should be treated with appropriate caution.

Technical facts

Complications
Perpetual calendar, minute repeater, equation of time, power reserve, thermometer, among others
Case
Gold, per the reported original brief to use gold wherever technically possible
A replica
Breguet (the modern company) produced a reconstruction, sometimes displayed alongside discussion of the original — researchers should be careful to distinguish the original No. 160 from the modern replica in photographs and museum labels

Historical significance

  • Reportedly commissioned by an admirer of Marie-Antoinette with instructions to use gold wherever possible and to include every complication then known, though the details and even the identity of the commissioner are recorded through secondary Breguet-company tradition rather than a surviving original commission letter, and should be treated with appropriate caution.
  • Took decades to complete and was finished only after Breguet's death by his son and successors.
  • Stolen from the L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem, in 1983 and recovered in 2007; the theft and recovery are themselves well-documented and important provenance events for the object.

Photographs

Breguet Marie-Antoinette watch in Jerusalem
Breguet Marie-Antoinette watch in Jerusalem — Atzatz, CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikimedia Commons file page

Photographs are illustrative examples of the type, not necessarily the exact object described. Verify details against the source file page.

Sources & references

  1. L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, published provenance and theft/recovery history
  2. Breguet company, published historical materials (commissioning legend treated as company tradition, not independently documented)

Where sources disagree, the disagreement is stated rather than resolved silently.