Credits: Article and images by Jeremiah Chan @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/ineichen-auctioneers-la-vie-en-rose-auction/
Opus V was produced in a limited edition series of 100 pieces with 45 in rose gold (of which Lot 28 belongs to), 45 in platinum, seven in platinum set with round and oval cut diamonds and a final three in platinum set with baguette diamonds.
The estimate on this historically significant piece is CHF 50,000 – CHF 100,000, and the last one sold at auction that we could find was also a rose gold piece (No. 34 of 45), which was Lot 1057 at the Phillips Hong Kong Watch Auction XII in June 2021.
Our last pick comes from a former Audemars Piguet and Breguet alum, Daniel Roth. Daniel Roth, the watchmaker, was an integral part of the plan to revive Breguet during the 1970s when Parisian jeweler Chaumet decided to purchase the company from Englishman George Brown. Brown’s grandfather Edward had acquired the company from the last living descendants of Abraham-Louis Breguet, whose focus had already shifted from fine watchmaking to developing electrical apparatus for telegraphy, railroad signaling and physiology.
After Roth was hired by the Chaumet brothers, Jacques and Pierre, he took it upon himself to study, for a year, everything about A.-L. Breguet — the man, his techniques and innovations. Starting from 1973, and together with director of Breguet, François Bodet, he helped crystallize the design language of the Breguet we know and love today: guilloché dial, coin edge case and those Breguet hands instantly recognizable from across any room.
The Chaumet brothers were forced to sell Breguet to Investcorp in 1987 under a cloud of scandal, and Daniel Roth left a year later to start his eponymous brand. He took those Breguet dial design elements he helped develop and incorporated them into his distinctive double-ellipse Ellipsocurvex case, a shape both round and rectangular at the same time.
Lot 20 has none of those Breguet design elements to speak of. The self-winding caliber DR115 that powers it has a jump hour complication, a retractable minute hand display and a central seconds hand. It is itself based on the caliber DR113, a movement developed by Daniel Roth to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the brand in 1999. This was also the last design creation Daniel Roth was personally involved in before the company was sold to Bvlgari in 2000. The original caliber DR113 was called “papillon” for the butterfly-shaped opening of the minute display.
Credits: Article and images by Jeremiah Chan @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/ineichen-auctioneers-la-vie-en-rose-auction/