FP Journe buys his own Breguet clock at auction for 5.8 million euros

Who said the rarest timepieces no longer attract enthusiasts? At the very top of the collector sphere, more than 1,800 enthusiasts turned out for The Geneva Watch Auction: XXI: more than €46 million spent—or invested—to acquire 98% of the pieces offered for sale. The top ten lots alone accounted for nearly half of the auction in this exceptional sale. This is hardly surprising, except to confirm that the exceptional is always popular. Except that, this time, the two most expensive lots weren't watches, but clocks. For example, a Cartier Portico Horloge mystère No. 3 (lot 118), a museum-worthy example of Art Deco design dating from 1924, was sold for €4.2 million. This is double its estimate, given that there are only six examples in the world of these exceptional clocks, presented for the first time at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1925.

But the lot that generated the most ink, and attracted the highest bid, was a 255 mm high Breguet Sympathique No. 1 clock (Lot 18), with a classic shape designed by David Penney, then a watch illustrator. A clock that takes up the concept imagined in 1795 by the brilliant Abraham Louis Breguet and allows the time to be adjusted and the movement of a pocket watch to be regulated simply by inserting it into a base in the upper part of the clock. In its time, Breguet would only produce eleven of these. As the brand celebrates this year the 250th anniversary of its creation in Paris, it is a gold piece associated with a tourbillon watch also in gold made by THA (Technique Horlogère Appliquée) in 1991 that the famous contemporary independent watchmaker François-Paul Journe bought at auction at Phillips for 5.883 million euros.

Offering, as in Breguet's time, moon phase, equation of time, thermometer and complete calendar (month, day, date), it was estimated at five times a month, around one million euros. But it must be said that it is the only gold model of the twenty pieces then produced at the request of the Breguet house by François-Paul Journe, who then headed THA, with Denis Flageollet and Dominique Mouret, on the occasion of the historic sale The Art of Breguet . It is associated with a Breguet wristwatch in yellow gold, 36 mm in diameter, combining tourbillon, moon phase and power reserve displayed in regulator style. This exceptional historical duo purchased by François-Paul Journe will now join the museum of the FP Journe brand which should open its doors right next to its manufacture in the heart of Geneva.