Auction Alert: Philippe Dufour for Audemars Piguet Pocket Watch No.1
The triple-signed Grande et Petite Sonnerie is set to hit the block during The Geneva Watch Auction: XVII, May 13-14
The term “history” is bandied about with relative ease in horological circles — at times, almost to the point of being meaningless. After all, if everything is historically important, then nothing is. With that said, one piece coming to the block in Phillips’ upcoming The Geneva Watch Auction: XVII certainly merits use of the term.
But first, some context. In the late 70s and early 80s, the Swiss watch industry was in the depths of what would come to be known as the quartz crisis. Watchmaking as a whole appeared to be somewhat of a dying trade, and complicated watchmaking in particular was very much on the back foot. It was against this backdrop that a watchmaker based in the traditional heart of the Swiss watch industry, the Vallée de Joux, began producing immaculate, and complicated, watches and watch movements.
Philippe Dufour began his career at Jaeger-LeCoultre, before spending time working at Gérald Genta and Audemars Piguet on his way to starting his own eponymous workshop. In a world where watchmaking was heavily focused on the future, Dufour took immense inspiration from the past in everything from technique to design.
The First Dufour Watch
It was in this context that Dufour built his first Grande et Petite Sonnerie movement. After seeing an example cased in brass, Audemars Piguet agreed to place an order and, in 1982, Dufour delivered what would be the first of five pocket watches to the brand, which would eventually go on to be sold by Asprey in London, the well-known London retailer. These five watches proved critical, as the time spent making them cemented Dufour’s desire to produce watches under his own name. In fact, the first piece produced and sold under the Philippe Dufour name was what turned out to be his last Grande et Petite Sonnerie Pocket Watch.
The Philippe Dufour for Audemars Piguet Grande et Petite Sonnerie Pocket Watch No.1 is cased in a 61mm of 18k yellow gold with case, dial and movement all signed by Audemars Piguet. Additionally, the underside of the dial is signed P. Dufour, and the case features an additional signature from Asprey. The movement itself is a marvel of mechanical watchmaking featuring two independently wound barrels, one to power the timekeeping of the watch and the other to power the Sonnerie. This also winds up being the main point of visual interest for the watch’s movement, as the two barrels, as well as their independent ratchet wheels and the crown wheel, are given pride of place when the watch’s hunter caseback is opened.
So then, what you have here is a singularly important, hand-made, tremendously complicated, beautifully finished and rare pocket watch that happens to be triple-signed by a member of the holy trinity, a famed retailer, and a man who is, quite possibly, the foremost extant independent watchmaker of our era.
Dufour at Auction
All of this then brings us to the all-important question of price. Putting a price on something as special as this spectacular pocket watch is a tall order and, without a doubt, auction estimating is more of an art than a science. In this case, Phillips has placed an estimate of CHF400,000-800,000. I cannot fathom a world in which this piece does not blow past that figure, though if it does realize a six-figure sale price, the winning bidder will have just gotten the deal of a lifetime — at least by the standards of high-end watchmaking.
A result of this magnitude would represent a real jump for this model, though it would also be an appropriate one. When this very watch came up for sale in 2012, it sold for HKD $1,340,000 (approximately USD $216,000 adjusted for inflation). Considering the rise in interest in independents, as well as the performance of Philippe Dufour at auction in that time, a marked increase in sale price should be expected.
Dufour’s watches are routinely breaking into seven-figures. The Duality and Grande et Petite Sonnerie Wristwatches routinely sell for multiple millions of dollars, and even the Simplicity, Dufour’s most produced model, has been seeing sale prices bordering on CHF 1,000,000. Though not a direct one-to-one, Philipps sold another Grande et Petite Sonnerie pocket watch (the only one produced under his own mark) for CHF 2,329,000 in November 2021 — nearly three times the high end of its estimate. For a pocket watch of this significance to not sell at a similar price would be surprising at best and near unconscionable at worst.
Interestingly enough, Roger Smith, one of the few other independent watchmakers playing on Dufour’s level, also has a significant pocket watch up for auction in the coming weeks, which my colleague Jack Forster wrote about here. Suffice it to say, if you are an enthusiast of high end independent complicated pocket watches, your time has certainly come.