RETROGRADE PERPETUAL CALENDAR
The perpetual calendar does not resemble anything from the mainstream. There was a similar one in a private German Collection retailed by Hamilton & Co for the Indian market, with a minute repeater sold by Sotheby’s a few months ago (see below).
The dial is the same, with the difference that the days of the week are digital. The cases are similarly decorated. I do not think they are from the same ebauche maker, though. This type of repeating ebauche was made by Aubert frères, Piguet frères, Piguet et Lecoultre, John Cezar Piguet, and Charles Piguet. I even know one sold by Victorin Piguet.
The Swiss, until about 1860, did not know how to make perpetual calendars without a retrograde date. Even after 1860, when Louis Audemars figured it out
[1], the Swiss used the old system for more than twenty years. There are known examples even from circa 1900. These are rare though. Even Louis Audemars, the inventor of the new system, used the old one on more than just a few occasions.
There is a controversy about who invented the retrograde system, some say Elisée Golay, some Louis-Elisée Piguet, and some Eugene Lecoultre. Whoever it was, it was during the early 1850’s. It might be a good subject for the new column,
Fact or Fiction, in our Watch & Clock Bulletin which is to be launched in November or December.
[2]
The ebauche was made especially for retrograde calendars with the 4th wheel (the one fixed with the small second hand) moved to the 8 o’clock position and the train designed in a reversed C-arrangement. Retrograde calendars come in a number of dial designs. The basic categories are those with the small seconds placed at normal 6 o’clock, and the other with the seconds at 4 or 8 o’clock. The former can utilize any standard ebauche. This system was used by Courvoisier Frères, Eugene Lecoultre, Marius Lecoultre (a son of the former), Henri Grandjean, Huguenin et fils from Le Locle, LeCoultre et Cie, Louis Audemars, and some found on English watches that allow us to date these calendars within just a few years.
The second type, with the small seconds at 4 or 8 o’clock, are based on the old Adrien Philippe train arrangement. Ironically, Philippe treated it as a necessary evil and in a few years found a way to eliminate it.
I found these on Louis Audemars, Courvoisier Frères, Eugene Lecoultre (apparently, they used both types), Ekegrén, Patek Philippe (with ebauche from "Nicole & Audemars"), and even Tiffany & Co, Geneva (there was a short lived Tiffany’s enterprise in Geneva making watches from their own ebauches).
Within both systems there are many more divisions. I have always had an impression that these retrograde perpetuals were made individually or in just very small series.
Among a few dozens of retrograde perpetual calendar watches that came through my hands, I couldn’t figure out much of a pattern. There are over a dozen different types of dials, see below.
The top left is most common, there are twenty of them that I know. If we go to the movements, see below, there is no common team at all.
If we analyze the actual calendar mechanism it is not much better. The mechanism, roughly, can be divided by the way the date hand jumps, it does so either with a help of a hairspring, a cam or a rack (the famous
La Merveilleuse by Ami Lecoultre has a rack system).
The hairspring one, I had though, was a characteristic of the Lecoultres and in auction catalogues I described them as such. It was difficult to figure out which Lecoultre because some are signed by Eugene (1819-1882), some by Marius (1847-1915), and one is signed simply Lecoultre under a hammer, presumably LeCoultre & Cie.
Unfortunately, a name stamped on the movement, even if under the dial, is rarely a name of the ebauche maker. Most often it is the
etablisseur’s name. Complicating the matter even more, if we take the same
etablisseur, like Ekegren, among his four retrograde calendars that I know, I could not find two similar.
In 2006, when Daniel Aubert published the Auguste Reymond’s rediscovered photos of 19th century ebauches, including a few with retrograde perpetual calendars, attributed by Aubert to Louis Audemars, it changed the perspective. Assuming that he is right and all the photos represent Audemars ebauches, the hairspring ones should be attributed to Audemars. On the other hand, the five retrograde Audemars calendars I know and took apart, do not have a hairspring system.
Then again, why would Reymond have taken photos of just Audemars ebauches? An early photographer, trained as a watchmaker, would have taken photos of any interesting or unusual watch or an ebauche.
The jurors of the 1896 Paris Exposition credited Eugene Lecoultre with the invention of the retrograde system. They were wrong because there are Breguets from the 1810's with perpetual retrograde calendars, but the possibility that he was the inventor of the hairspring type still remains
[3]. Eugene was one of the jurors. The opinion described above could not have been voiced without his expressed knowledge. Therefore, he must have believed that he invented the retrograde calendar or, at least, one form of it.
So, even today we have little clue as to who was making retrograde calendars. Piguet & Lecoultre made some that were very distinguished because the sector is in a form of a subsidiary dial, which is usually set just under the 12 o’clock. It is also the most elegant one as far as the mechanism is concerned. The date hand flies back about 300°, while regular ones flies back only about 180°. Victorin Piguet made some in form of a sector, similar to Breguet’s from a century before. Actually, they made all kinds, including the hairspring type, but the sector design was the most common. The earliest Patek Philippe retrograde calendar, according to the records, was bought from Nicole & Audemars. I have never heard of such a company. Maybe, the basic movement was bought from Paul Nicole, and for the retrograde calendar the movement was given to Louis Audemars. A practice where a basic movement was bought from one company while an additional complication was made by another was something I found more than once browsing
etablisseurs records.
Generally yet, we are in the dark as far as the central-date retrograde calendars go, we have lots of existing examples but almost zero information about their makers.
My impression is that they were made for special orders or in very limited numbers by a few watchmakers using all kinds of ebauches. Who made the ebauches especially for these calendars that are with the seconds at 8 or 4 o’clock we do not know.
We know that one Arnold Huguenin from La Chaux-de-Fonds, best known for his mainspring patent for the 8-day cheap watches with visible balance and, possibly, the invention of the telephonograph, presented two retrograde calendars, probably made by him, at the 1889 Paris Exposition.
With a photo of the calendar, maybe I can match it with another known example. A photo of the repeating mechanism could be of help also.
Philip Poniz
[1] Hartmut Zantke claims the system was invented in 1862, Pierre Audemars claims 1860, but it must have been a year or two before because there exists a Patek Philippe with a Louis Audemars perpetual calendar, which was completed in 1859. Interestingly, the earliest Patek with retrograde perpetual calendar, I know of, is from 1865. For the six years before, all the earliest perpetual Pateks, I am familiar with, were based on the Audemars system. By Louis Audemars I mean the House of Louis Audemars, Louis died in 1833.
[2] If anyone knows or suspects published horological fictions or just simple incorrectness, I would appreciate if you let me know. Watch & Clock Bulletin is the first publication that is not afraid to tackle the problem.
[3] At least on the continent. Around 1760, Henry Hindley of York constructed a clock with perpetual calendar based on a spring like that.
