I am please to offer from my private collection this MUSEUM historic Chinese Qing Dynasty Bovet Duplex Gild Dragon pocket watch&chain seal fob  ,specially made for the Chinese Emperor's Court.MUSEUM QUALITY WATCH! MINT PRISTINE CONDITION!The watch is a new-old stock! Perserved for near 2 centuries like in the day it left the factory!I can declare that such a watch in such a condition is one of a kind in the world.The watch is oversize-55mm in diameter.The watch has amazing fancy enamel dial,depicting a Dragon and Chinese numbers.Central sweep seconds hand(Seconde morte or dead beat hand).The watch has been made by  the most famous Bovet watch company ! Bovet  was the official watch master to the Chinese Emperor! Amazing high grade Chinese Duplex crab leg movement.The balance is decorated with blue steel Bat weights to cast away to evil spirits(according chinese belives),highly ornamented hand engraved movement.Fully jeweled,blue screws,screwd Chaton ruby endstone on balance,precision regulator.
Please note that this is a real crab leg Duplex escapement movement(not a Dupex style lever escapement),so the central sweep hand move and stop for exact 1 second interval!!!
  Perfect working order. The watch comes with the original key.The movement is hand engraved and highly ornamented! Signed Bovet Fleurier! 
The case is also signed Bovet on Chinese.PERFECT WORKING ORDERThe watch comes with a CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY! Provenance;the watch comes from the most important chinese collection of the bulgarian diplomat Mr.Ferdinandov,who was the Bulgarian ambasador in Beijing during 1960's. He brought over 1000 Chinese watches and clocks. His collection is considered for the biggest one in the whole Eastern Europe!Bovet history: The founder
 (1797–1849) was the son of the watchmaker Jean-Frédéric Bovet. He studied the art with his father in Fleurier, but in 1814 left home for political reasons with two of his brothers, Alphonse and Frederic, to study watch making in London. After studying in the city for a few years with the firm of Messrs. , Magniac sent Bovet to , China in 1818. Almost as soon as he arrived he was able to sell four of his watches for the equivalent of US$1 million in 2008 currency. The 19th century: Founding of the company and China.
The original Bovet company was founded in London in 1822 by  for the purposes of manufacturing watches exclusively for the Chinese market.Some watch historians believe that the company was established in London due to the ease of shipping watches to China on the frequent ships of the .Edouard's brothers, Alphonse and Frederic, stayed in London to manage shipping; another brother, Charles-Henri, managed manufacturing in Fleurier, while Edouard developed the market in Canton. Bovet was neither the first nor the last company to target the Chinese watch market. They shared it with Ilbury, , and , among others. Edouard Bovet discovered the potential of the Chinese market as a student of Ilbery in London, from whom he borrowed some design ideas. While from 1820 onwards Vacheron Constantin dominated the market in imperial northern China, Bovet remained market leader in the more populous south of the country. Although the 19th-century Chinese watch market was predated by a few Jesuit watch makers as early as the 15th century, by the early 19th century watch making in China had become of such a low quality that the new European watches were quickly appreciated. Notwithstanding their high price, the popularity of Bovet watches in China meant that the company had to contract with other Swiss manufacturers such as  to help them meet demand. Even though Juvet Fleurier also sold pieces in China, it was not uncommon to see Bovet pieces with a Juvet movement. In the 1830s Bovet established a manufacturing facility in Canton, but because of restrictions resulting from the , they had to close that facility and open a smaller one in .It was about this time that the company created a Chinese name to more effectively market to the middle class. The Chinese name for Bovet, "Bo Wei", became a common noun for watches in China for many years. The Chinese watch market collapsed around 1855 due to competition from France and the United States along with the tremendous number of Chinese-made counterfeits.By 1864 problems caused by the Opium War caused the Bovet family to sell their interest in the company.They sold the company to their manufacturing inspectors in Fleurier, Jules Jequier and Ernest Bobillier, who were soon joined by Ami Leuba. As of 2013, watches made for the Chinese market by this manufacturer and others such as William Ilbery of London command high prices as collectible art objects Chinese watch history; Clocks and watches were never devices owned by the everyday citizen of China. The Chinese had been using a public time keeping system that was based on a combination of sun dials, water clocks, and astronomical observations. While the EQUINOCTIAL SYSTEM divides a 24 hour day into 12 equal periods, with each having four quarters (thus each quarter corresponds to an half-hour in western time keeping system), this system was only used by astronomers and astrologers. Because China was an agricultural based society, the PRACTICAL Chinese hours was the TEMPORAL SYSTEM, which were based on sunrise and sunset. Both the day and the night were divided into six equal periods. This obviously made the periods unequal because of seasonal changes: As winter approaches, the "day periods" became shorter; while during the summer, they become longer. To make things even more complicated, in practical use the night was actual divided into five "special" night periods, instead of the theoretical six; and each night period was in turn divided into five "points" equally. The first Chinese watches were originally constructed by the Mandarin Jesuit missionaries for the Chinese emperors since the late Ming dynasty (late 16th century to 1644). The emperors considered the watches as both astrological toys and jewelry. In fact, horological and astronomical instruments were the items that caught the emperors' eyes and allowed the missionaries to obtain their feet in the Chinese doo By the Manuchu (Ch'ing) dynasty (1644 - 1911), watches imported from Switzerland had become the Emperors' favorite toys. The watches came in different shapes and types (such as a gun form watch, a musical watch, or a singing bird box with a watch), and no expense was spared in terms of jewelry ornamentations. Both the Emperors K'ang-hsi (Kang Xi) (1661-1722) and his grandson, Ch'ien-lung (Chien-Lung) (1735-1796) were well-known watch collectors, the latter had an amazing collection of over a hundred clocks and watches. Today you could still see part of his collection in the National Museum in Beijing. While K'ang-hsi had commissioned watches from his missionaries and Swiss horologers, Ch'ien-lung was more nationalistic by ordering Cantonese artisans to construct clocks in the "western fashion". In conclusion, European watches before the 19th century were either specially imported individually (by firms such as Terrot et Fazy), or produced by European expat horologers who followed their missionaries or ambassadors as part of a cultural exchange. The most famous of these horologers were Francois-Louis Stadlin (1658-1740), imperial horologer of K'ang-hsi; and Charles-Henry Petitpierre-Boy (b.1769), who entered the court while following the ambassador of Holland, and built a pendulum clock inside the Old Imperial Summer Palace Yuen-Ming-Yue By Ch'ien-lung's son, Chia-Ching's (1796-1820) reign, several Swiss jewelry and automaton companies, led by Piquet et Meylan and Jacquet-Droz, imported successfully a cylinder watch that was fit inside a gold and enamel empire case with seeded pearls ("Montre D'or Empire", the French Empire Style Gold Watch). The enamel painting was frequently a depiction of flowers. The fact that the automaton companies were the leading horological importers of China showed that the Chinese continued to consider watches as mechanical toys. The Chinese were still using the temporal time system in everyday life. Even though some clever watchmakers did create watches that had an adjustable chapter to accommodate the changing time periods, the requirement of having a horologer to adjust the chapter daily rendered the adjustable watch impractical. The normal, "non-adjustable" version, continued to be only used by astrologers. Hence it was no suprise for the automaton companies that their wealthy Mandarin customers were mainly interested in Jewelry watches, or Repeaters. Save for the emperors and his court mathematicians, scientists and astronomers, no one seemed to be interested in purchasing a chronometer, a chronograph, or a calendar watch because no one would use a watch for actual timekeeping. The latter type of watches was particularly impractical in China, because the Chinese had always been using the lunar caleChinese watch history;   If you are not satisfied in any way-money back guarantee. Free shipping to worldwide.