Constatin Detouche

The massive gilt-bronze broken-arch case has partially fluted stepped corner columns and beveled glasses all around. It is adorned with exceptionally cast decorative floral appliques and is surmounted by large acorn finials and a giant decorative urn. The decorative elements go all the way around so the back is as interesting as the front.

The exceptional gilt-bronze astro dial has porcelain chapters with gilt-bronze bezels for the minutes, seconds, hours, day, date, month, up/down indicators and the maker. It also carries the outside escapement and has unusual decorative steel-cut hands.

The exceptional eight-day time and strike movement has a geneva stop on the time spring, an ingenious up/down indicator mechanism for both springs and shaped screwed movement posts. All the lift arms are terminated with spring-loaded steel ends. The dead-beat escapement, visible on the dial, has a steel escape wheel that is housed in a glazed circular capsule, has jeweled pivots and is screwed to the collet and an anchor with jeweled pallets. The heavy half-second bi-metallic temperature compensating Ellicott-type pendulum has finely screwed weights, the beat adjustment on the crutch, a screwed fast/slow, is suspended from double steel springs and swings against an adjustable porcelain indicator plaque.

Springs have indecipherable inscriptions.

Louis Constantin Detouche_ (1810 – 1889)
The son of the watchmaker Constantin Detouche, Constantin-Louis was born in Paris on October 20, 1810 and trained by his father who specialized in  skeleton clocks.  In 1845, he recruited as his main collaborator Jacques-François Houdin, who had worked for a long time in the Breguet studio. The collaboration of the two men was extremely fruitful, allowing the development of various ingenious mechanisms.
They were invited to the exhibition of the products of industry in 1849, where they obtained a silver medal. They took part in the Universal Exhibition
in London in 1851 where they received the gold medal. The two artists were then invited to the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855, where they were honored with the same distinction.
Detouche received the cross of the Legion of Honor from Napoleon III and was made a Knight of Draneborg by King Frederick VII of Denmark. Covered with honous and glory, he retired from business at the fall of the Second Empire and devoted himself to the Town Hall
of Villemonble (1871-1879).
In 1887, he published a revised and corrected edition of Claude Saulnier’s Traité d’horlogerie moderne théorique et pratique, known as
the “C. Detouche edition”. The illustrious watchmaker filed numerous patents and used several signatures, the most common being “C. Detouche”.

Another example by Detouche that we have owned:

c.1842 Massive French Astronomical Skeleton Table Regulator with Remontoire and Quarter- Striking