A10047

Very Rare Sully Escapement Quarter Repeater

£21,000.00

Signed  Coutterez a Lyon
Circa   1780
A very rare late 18th Century French quarter repeater with Sully's escapement in a silver consular case.
Diameter   61 mm       Depth   18 mm

Out of stock

Description

A very rare late 18th Century French quarter repeater with Sully's escapement in a silver consular case.  Deep full plate fire gilt fusee movement with five slender turned pillars.  Small pierced and engraved cock with unusual forked foot, garnet endstone in a polished steel setting.  Polished steel regulator set below the plain three arm gilt balance, blue steel spiral hairspring.  Very rare Sully type frictional rest escapement. Vertical brass escape wheel, the teeth with double impulse faces acting on two polished steel pallets mounted directly on the balance staff.   Push pendant quarter repeating on a bell in the case.  Winding through the signed white enamel dial, Roman numerals, gilt beetle and poker hands.  Plain silver consular case, silver push pendant.

A very rare form of escapement, possibly less than ten exist.  Few were produced, mainly by French makers and this is the only one known with repeating work.  See Chamberlain's Its About Time page 149 for a description of the escapement and page 319 for a short biography of Henry Sully who developed the escapement based on Debaufre's design in about 1720.  An article about the escapement by Charles Allix is in the Winter 1980 edition of Antiquarian Horology.  In excellent condition the movement shows evidence of experimentation that was not fully developed by the maker