Lot 426

Bovet

A rare, delightful silver enamel pocket watch with centre seconds for the Chinese market

Sold

The watch has an engraved Greek pattern and opaque light blue enamelling around the edge. The back is decorated with a polychrome miniature portrait of a young lady in a plumed hat on an engine-turned ground with translucent green enamelling, framed by a border of wildflowers in champlevé enamel.

Edouard Bovet born in Fleurier, Switzerland in 1797, son of a local master-watchmaker, Jean-Frédéric Bovet. Edouard had four brothers, Frédéric, Alphonse, Gustave, Charles-Henri, and a sister, Caroline. In1814 Edouard Bovet is against Neuchâtel's return to Prussian rule after the fall of Napoleon. After his apprenticeship, he leaves Fleurier with Alphonse and Frédéric to work as a watchmaker in London -then the centre of Europe's watch trade and manufacture. 1818 Edouard Bovet's employer, the Magniac company, sends him to Canton, the only Chinese port open to Western trade. He leaves England on the East India merchantman, Orwell, on April 20, arriving in Canton via the Cape of Good Hope on August 16. Delighted, he wrote to his brother in Switzerland, enthusing about the market potential and asking him to send more watches, but only of the very best quality, since this was where the demand lay and there was no difficulty about payment. Since 1822 Bovet, now living in Canton, founds a partnership company for the China watch trade with his two brothers in London, Alphonse and Frédéric, and his third brother Gustave, watchmaker in Fleurier. The charter of the company is drawn up in London on May 1. Business booms, and the company quickly transfers production to Fleurier.