Description: Rosegold consular cased, gilt brass, front wound, full plate fusee movement (38.5 mm case diameter) with round baluster pillars and finely engraved, French style double footed balance cock. English style ruby end stone which replaced a French style steel cockerel. Signed back plate ‘Gregson A Paris No. 5003’. Would have had a verge escapement, but was later converted to an English detached lever escapement. Polished steel balance. Enamelled brass dial with red Arabic hour numerals and black Arabic minute numerals, as per Lépine workshop custom. Original gold beetle and poker hands, of later style. The edges of the gold case finely decorated, back decorated with applied fruits and leaves of three coloured gold.
Additional Info:
This watch was built and modified in London but completely in French style, concerning movement, dial (Lépine style) and case. Only the hands are of English style. Later in its life it got updated (most probably in the Gregson workshop) to a more precise detached lever escapement, which needed the addition of a bridge to hold the system and a modification of the lower pivot to house the new polished steel balance staff.
Jean – Pierre Gregson, originally from London, was appointed in 1776 watchmaker to the king in Paris and established himself at the Rue Dauphine. After the appointment he signed his work ‘Gregson Horloger du Roy a Paris’. His work was greatly influenced by Lépine’s and he was one of the first watchmakers of his time to use the Lépine bridged calibre. In 1787 Gregson founded a watch manufacture in Braille. He had a penchant for complicated escapements and unusual shapes. In his pocket watches he often used cylinder – or virgule escapements. The wolf teeth system can often be found. He built, among other gold enamel watches with virgule escapements, watches with visible balance wheel and center seconds. He also produced pocket watches with chronometer escapement.
In 1790, after the beginning of the French Revolution’ he returned to London in his safe home and he stopped using the addition ‘Horloger du Roy’ for his signatures. He sometimes signed as ‘Horloger a Paris’. In London he established a new workshop called, now simply ‘Gregson London’. There he continued to build watches in the French style and kept the numbering system as well as intermediately the signature ‘Gregson a Paris’. Between 1800 and 1815, he teamed up temporarily with a colleague named Jefferson together, and used Gregson signature ‘Gregson & Jefferson, London‘.
Antiquarian Horology 
