The watch itself was reconstructed using only images of the original pocketwatch and has all the tellings of a true grande complication; it is a self winding Replica Bell & Ross watches with a minute repeater, a full perpetual calendar, an equation of time, a jumping hour, a power reserve indicator, and even a bimetallic thermometer.Then, in 1983, the original No. 160 Marie Antoinette Breguet was stolen from the museum and considered lost forever.When Nicolas Hayek (Swatch Group) acquire Breguet in 1999, he felt something had been taken from him, something was missing from the Breguet family tree...the Marie Antoinette Pocket Watch. In 2005, Breguet began constructing a reproduction of this highly complicated watch and after one misfire (original reproduction popped!), the Queen was announced at Baselworld 2008. At the time, it was the most complicated Replica Bell & Ross watches on earth, and remains to this day within the top five on the planet.
We don't talk too much about pocketwatches here on Hodinkee, they're not really our "steez", as the kids say. However, when the Queen comes to town, you pay her the respect she deserves. The watch you see to the left is a reproduction of a pocketwatch created by Breguet himself over 200 years ago. The story goes that one of Marie Antoinette's admirers asked Breguet to build the Queen the most complicated, most spectacular watch possible. Breguet obliged, the only problem being construction took 44 years, which was about 34 years too long for Antoinette (killed by her own people) and 4 years to long for Breguet himself, who died prior to its completion.The Replica Bell & Ross watches remained in the possession of Antoinette descendents for years, eventually coming to reside in a museum in Jerusalem.
