This charming and highly complex watch is almost certainly the work of the exceptional Genevan watchmaker Henry Capt. With its concealed automaton, it is one of very few known examples with two automaton scenes. It exhibits several unusual features; the musical movement is enclosed between the plates with a pinned barrel instead of the more usual sur-plateau type.

Henry-Daniel Capt (1773-ca 1840)
Henry-Daniel or Henri Capt, together with Isaac Piguet and Philippe Meylan, was one of the leading manufacturers of musical automata at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. He specialized in the production of complicated watches, musical and automaton timepieces and was amongst the first manufacturers in Geneva to use a mechanical mechanism with pinned cylinder and tuned-tooth comb. Around 1789 Capt settled in Geneva and worked for several renowned companies such as Jaquet-Droz, Godet, Leschot and his brother-in-law Isaac Daniel Piguet.

When Piguet left to enter a partnership with Philippe-Samuel Meylan in 1811, Henry Capt continued to work first on his own, later with his son Charles Henry, until around 1830, when he joined forces with Aubert and son, Place Bel-Air in Geneva.