Signed Paul Buhré, Swiss, no. 5079, stamped with London import mark for 1925-1926

The present watch immediately impresses by its incredible, almost unused condition, the plain classic heavy gold case complementing the beautiful perfect white enamel dial with its bold Breguet numerals. What makes this watch very special indeed is however the delightful Westminster chime minute repeating performed by four hammers on four tuned gongs. The Westminster carillon repeating mechanism is far more complicated to construct than the better known quarter or minute repeating on two gongs and is very rarely found at all except in some of the world’s most complicated watches. It appears from our research that the Paul Buhré Company made a small series of these watches with Westminster minute repeating only especially for the English market, the sound of the repeating of course replicates the peal of bells that rings out from the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament in London including the large bell known as “Big Ben”.

The Buhré dynasty of watch makers, starting with Paul-Léopold Buhré around 1815, specialized in the manufacture of high quality watches for the Russian market until the revolution of 1917 when new markets had to be found. In 1930 the firm was listed as PAUL BUHRE & HENRI BARBEZAT-BOLE SA.