Rarely found at auction, this important example of the famous Girard-Perregaux three golden bridge chronometer tourbillon is not only an icon of watch design but is also fitted with a high-precision detent chronometer escapement and therefore intended as a serious timekeeper.

It is also believed to be one of the earliest of its kind to be made. Manufactured before 1860, it dates from the period when Constant Girard developed the design of three parallel bridges securing the barrel, centre wheel and balance wheel, revolutionary at the time as it combines both precision watchmaking and aesthetics.

In 1884, Girard submitted to the United States Patent Office a patent of the design of the movement “Tourbillon with three gold bridges.” The design went on to be awarded a Gold Medal at the 1867 and 1889 International Expositions in Paris.

Undoubtedly the Girard-Perregaux three golden bridge movement is one of the most instantly recognizable and most attractive ever created.

In 1852 Constant Girard founded the firm Girard & Cie. Following his marriage to Marie Perregaux in 1856, the Girard-Perregaux Manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, was born. While Abraham Louis-Breguet invented the tourbillon, a device that rotates the escapement in a cage to compensate for timing errors brought on by gravity in a pocket watch, Girard-Perregaux refined it. He turned a technical element into one that also played an aesthetic role.

A very similar chronometer, No. 51’701, is described and illustrated in Reinhard Meis, Le Tourbillon, p. 131.