Lot 315

Moricand & Degrange

Europe

An attractive Swiss gold enamel pocket watch with digital jumping hour display and Champlevé enamelled map of Europe on reverse side

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The back of the pocket watch shows a geopolitical map of Italy and its adjacent European neighbours in black, azure and gold Champlevé enamel.
Fourteen gold enamel watches with a map motif are known to have been created by Breguet; eight more are known from other makers. The Metropolitan Museums of Art owns another gold and enamel pocket watch with Champlevé ornamentation by Moricand & Degrange. Futher pocket watches are held in the Palazzo Falson Historic House Museum Collection in Malta and in the British Museum in London.

Swiss jewellers and watch retailers Moricand & Degrange were based in Geneva and active from around 1828 to 1845.
Moïse-Etienne Moricand, known as Stefano (1779-1854), was the owner of the company Moricand & Degrange and also a renowned natural scientist. He moved to Italy at a very young age to establish a watch retailing business. He visited primarily the regions of Tuscany, Naples and Venice, where he collected plants, butterflies, mussels and minerals and met with a number of Italian scientists. After his return to Geneva in 1814 Stefano became a member of the Société des Naturalistes and a partner in his father’s company at the Rue des Corps-Saints.
He was co-founder of the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle de Genève but in everyday life he worked as a merchant for Moricand & Degrange. We have no information on the business partner Degrange.
Stefano’s uncle Pierre François Moricand (1758-?) moved to Paris in 1797 and worked for "La manufacture d'horlogerie de Versailles" (1795-1801), also called "La fabrique d'horlogerie genevoise de Versailles", until the company went into administration. Pierre François Moricand was married to the sister of famous miniature painter Jeanne-Marie Glaesner (1762-1823).