Five Hundred Years of Clocks and Watches in One Collection

"This is the first time I've ever seen a collection that sums up the history of time so well," says Geoffroy Ader, who appraised the 80 or so timepieces that will be dispersed in Neuilly on Wednesday, September 28. "Both eclectic and didactic, it spans several centuries and shows all the specificities of clockmaking and watchmaking." Mr. B. passionately collected a wide range of timepieces from the 1950s to the 1970s, which his family kept. Now they are being unveiled for the first time in 60 years. Sales receipts and annotated catalogs suggest that this connoisseur was a regular at the galleries of the leading Parisian antique dealers and the Hôtel Drouot, the nerve center of postwar international auctions. There he acquired many typically French montres oignon , or onion watches (translator’s note: a type of watch popular in the late 17 th and early 18 th with a bulbous shape and a chased case usually made of brass) and participated in the sales of still-remembered collections, such as that of Jubinal de Saint-Albin in 1960 and Bloch-Pimentel in 1961 (Étienne Ader, auctioneer). Gaudron, Paris, late 17 th century,…