The “Marie-Antoinette” watch No. 160

An unprecedented challenge

Basically, Breguet was asked to compress a cathedral clock into a few square centimetres. He set to work, and the eventual result was to be the fabulous watch No.160. There would be lengthy interruptions to the process – during the Revolution, for instance, his most urgent concern was his own survival – and he was to die four years before it was at last finished, in 1827, under the direction of his son Antoine-Louis. 
With watch No.160, he had created a masterpiece that would outlive him and that would play a major part not only in his own life, but also in that of his watchmaking firm for many years to come – and even to the present day.
The watch that company records refer to as a “gold watch” or “Perpétuelle minute repeater with perpetual equation of time and jumping seconds” survived the Revolution, which was fortunate given that the workshops were ransacked after Breguet had found refuge in his native Switzerland.
In 1809, Breguet decided to start working on it again, but it was in 1812, 1813 and 1814 that he really made progress: in 1812, 284 and a half days of work were devoted to watch No.160, followed by 228 and a half in 1813 and 212 in 1814. It should be remembered that in the last years of Napoleonic rule, Breguet was unable to export anything, as France was at war with all her neighbours, and French watchmakers were therefore far from overwhelmed with work: what better way to spend his time, while waiting for the fall of the emperor, than in returning to a job that was not only such a technical challenge but also charged with so many memories? 
After 1814, when the watch was nearly finished, came another interruption which was to last until August 1823. Determined to complete his masterpiece, Breguet spent the last month of his life working on its finishing touches. In September, he died, and it was another four years before Antoine-Louis Breguet was finally to finish it, in 1827. It should be stressed that it was of course a collective enterprise, demanding all the skills not only of Breguet and his son but also of a team of some twenty colleagues, including notably Michel Weber, one of the firm’s most brilliant watchmakers. 
 

The highlight of the 1923 exhibition

On his death in 1925, he left the Marie-Antoinette to his daughter, Vera Bryce Salomons, and it resumed its picaresque career. The years passed, and Vera Bryce Salomons decided to found the museum of Islamic art in Jerusalem, in memory of her friend and teacher Professor Leo Arie Mayer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a scholar of Islamic art. She donated all her collections of Islamic art to this project and chose to include the collection of clocks and watches that had belonged to her father. Thus it was that in 1974 the Marie-Antoinette watch, a masterpiece of horology – designed by a young Swiss watchmaker and probably intended for an Austrian archduchess who had become queen of France – became part of the collections of the L.A. Mayer  Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem, founded by a benefactor from a highly distinguished British Jewish family who was anxious to give a higher profile to Islamic art.

Nine years later, disturbing news shook the world of luxury watchmaking: on Saturday, 16 April 1983, the L.A. Mayer Museum had been raided when it was empty of visitors and not properly guarded, and its collection of clocks and watches had been stolen; naturally, the Marie-Antoinette had disappeared. The years passed, and despite the efforts of Interpol, the whereabouts of the stolen items remained a mystery. Speculation was rife, and numerous articles and studies were published, all declaring that any hopes of ever seeing the vanished watch were slim. The New York writer Allen Kurzweil even constructed a novel around it, titled The Grand Complication. 
 

The challenge set by Nicolas G. Hayek

In 2005, Nicolas G. Hayek, who had bought Breguet in 1999, decided to create a replica of this masterpiece: the newly revived house of Breguet would rise to the challenge. A solid technical team was assembled, and they gathered all the existing documentation. The project progressed at a steady pace, and the re-created watch was presented to the press in 2008.
Symbolically, it lay in a sumptuous inlaid oak box carved from Marie- Antoinette’s favourite oak tree at the Petit Trianon. Meanwhile, on 14 November 2007, a news story picked up by the world’s press revealed that the watches and clocks stolen in 1983 had been found, including most notably the Marie-Antoinette – twenty-four years after it had been stolen and 224 years after it had been commissioned. We now know that the man behind the robbery was Naaman Diller, a notorious Israeli thief who died in 2004. Shortly before his death, he told his wife Nili Shamrat about the heist and confessed that the stolen treasures, which were far too famous to be sold on the market, were still hidden away in bank vaults in Europe and America. It was Shamrat who was behind the restitution of 2007. While Breguet watch No.160 returned to its place in the L.A. Mayer Memorial Museum (now called the Museum for Islamic Art) in the old city of Jerusalem, the reconstructed masterpiece bore witness to the strength of Breguet’s attachment to its history, with all its repercussions, both symbolic and tangible. The decision to create a replica of 
this legendary piece of watchmaking 
history led to Versailles, its trees and the Petit Trianon, neglected and waiting for a generous patron.
For Nicolas G. Hayek, this represented a way of paying tribute to Queen Marie-Antoinette, who through her many purchases launched Breguet’s reputation at the start of his career. The long-awaited complete restoration of the façades and interior decor of the Petit Trianon and the French Pavilion was entirely financed by Montres Breguet and its Chairman as part of an exemplary patronage programme. The work that involved many different trades was completed in September 2008, recreating the backdrop of the Queen’s happiest years and offering visitors a chance to admire one of the most exquisite examples of European artistic heritage.

In 2005, Nicolas G. Hayek, who had bought Breguet in 1999, decided to create a replica of this masterpiece. Deprived of No. 160,  Western horology must take on the challenge and Breguet in particular had a duty to do so.