Marie-Antoinette and Breguet, the greatest watchmaking mystery of all time

Collection

Florence Noël - Stolen in Jerusalem in 1983, the famed watch is reported to have been found by a watchmaker in Tel Aviv in November 2007. A fittingly enigmatic reappearance for this truly exceptional timepiece.

Marie-Antoinette queen of France © Breguet

Breguet's Marie-Antoinette watch © Breguet

Christian Milet awarding the patron medal to Nicolas Hayek © Breguet

Stolen in Jerusalem in 1983, the famed watch is reported to have been found by a watchmaker in Tel Aviv in November 2007. A fittingly enigmatic reappearance for this truly exceptional timepiece.

Florence Noël

It’s such a bolt from the blue that even Nicolas Hayek, Chairman of the Swatch Group and Chairman and CEO of Manufacture Breguet, prefers to reserve his judgement. The famed Marie-Antoinette watch, completed by Breguet in 1827 and stolen from the L.A. Mayer Museum of Islamic Art in 1983, may well have reappeared on November 12th this year, as if by magic, in the hands of a Tel Aviv watchmaker. He claims to have purchased it and the other timepieces stolen 24 years ago from a British collector whose name has never been linked to this or any other theft. All in all an incredible story in keeping with the mysterious destiny of this prestigious timepiece, which experts concur is the world’s most valuable watch.

Rarely has so much been written about a timepiece as for Breguet’s Marie-Antoinette watch. Let us travel back in time to eighteenth-century Versailles and the court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. The queen, known for her love of jewellery, would often seek refuge in her private domain, the Petit Trianon, as well as in the arms of her different lovers. One of them, a Swedish officer of the queen’s guard named by historians as Count Axel de Fersen, is said to have commissioned a watch from Breguet as a gift for his queen.

Carte blanche

The Neuchâtel watchmaker was no stranger to Louis XVI’s court. Fascinated by objects of value, Marie-Antoinette already owned one of Breguet’s perpétuelles, a watch with a self-winding rotor mechanism, invented by Breguet himself. Clearly enamoured, the queen’s suitor contacted the watchmaker in 1783 with an unexpected proposal: to make the most spectacular watch ever seen.

With no limitation of time or expense, Breguet had free rein to create a watch that must leave Marie-Antoinette speechless with admiration. The queen knew nothing of this extraordinary gift. Nor did she live to admire it. When she mounted the scaffold in 1793, the watch was still at Breguet’s Parisian workshop. It was not finished until 1827.

A work of art

It took a full forty-four years to complete the watch, proof indeed that it is a work of art. This stunning piece features the greatest watchmaking complications known at that time. One of Breguet’s perpétuelles, the Marie-Antoinette watch includes a minute-repeater, a full perpetual calendar, an equation of time (that is, the difference each day between solar time and mean time indicated by clocks and watches), a power-reserve indicator, a bimetallic thermometer, a large independent seconds hand and a small centre seconds hand, a lever escapement, a gold balance spring and a parachute anti-shock device. This profusion of technological wonders were housed inside a gold case with a rock crystal dial through which the movement could be admired.

The Marie-Antoinette watch was presented to the museum in Jerusalem by the daughter of its new owner, Sir David Salomons, a patron of the arts and a great admirer of Breguet. It was one of the pieces in the Salomons collection that was stolen, in still unresolved circumstances, one Shabbat night in 1983. So great was the mystery surrounding the theft that in 2000 the author Allen Kurzweil placed it at the centre of his best-selling novel, "The Grand Complication."

Awaiting authentication

Hardly surprising then that the watch’s disappearance should represent an inestimable loss both for historians and for an expert in fine watches such as Nicolas Hayek, who has confessed that on occasions he would be willing to go to any lengths to see this family treasure returned. Rumour has it that Hayek, chairman of Breguet since 1999, was at one time considering offering a reward of CHF 10 million to whomever would return this prestigious piece. A thought that was soon chased from his mind by the problems that arose when a reward was offered for the Omega watch Buzz Aldrin had worn on the moon, and which disappeared in shipment. Never one to be defeated, Nicolas Hayek consoled himself by commissioning the Breguet workshops in La Vallée de Joux to make an exact replica of the Marie-Antoinette watch, using the few existing photos and descriptions (see below).

And now the watch has resurfaced, just as mysteriously, in the hands of a Tel Aviv watchmaker. One more enigma soon to be joined by another: that of authenticating the timepiece. Manufacture Breguet, when contacted, said a team of experts had been dispatched to Jerusalem to certify the watch’s authenticity, but admits that for the moment there has been no real contact with the museum’s authorities. Experts have valued the watch well in excess of $11 million, equivalent to the amount paid in 1999 for Henry Grave’s Patek Philippe at Sotheby’s. Clearly Marie-Antoinette and Breguet haven’t said their last word. ■

FROM VERSAILLES TO LA VALLÉE DE JOUX

Desiring a replica of the Marie-Antoinette watch, in 2005 Nicolas Hayek learned that Marie Antoinette’s favourite tree, the one whose branches had so often shaded the queen, was to be felled. And so an idea began to take shape: that of using wood from this dying oak to make a box in which to house the replica watch, to be displayed in the Breguet museum at Place Vendôme in Paris.

Without wasting a moment, the Manufacture sent its emissaries to Versailles. The initiative could not have come at a better time. The park was in dire need of renovation, and restoring a heritage of this magnitude has a price. While the park’s gardener accepted to give Manufacture Breguet a tenth of the felled tree, its administrators contacted Nicolas Hayek to suggest an investment of €100,000 towards repairing the park’s statues. The Chairman of the Swatch Group turned down the request… to make a far more generous offer instead: the restoration of the Petit Trianon, Marie-Antoinette’s private château which had fallen into an advanced state of disrepair.

Breguet’s patronage, which amounts to CHF 5 million, encompasses restoration of the Petit Trianon, the Belvédère and the Pavillon Français. In exchange, the Manufacture will have the possibility to host promotional events on this historic site as soon as restoration is complete in 2009.

The replica Marie-Antoinette watch should take its place in its royal wood box in 2008. A whisper has been heard at the Breguet workshops in La Vallée de Joux that it is almost ready to be revealed. F.N.

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