It is with an immense sense of exhilaration, pride and humility that we offer for the very first time at auction the iconic Derek Pratt for Urban Jürgensen Detent Escapement Tourbillon with Remontoire in an oval case, best known as simply the Derek Pratt Oval.
There are few watches that have been talked about at such length but actually seen so little as the Oval. This watch was not only the culmination of Pratt’s oeuvre but one of the most important, influential and era defining watches of the 20th century in the same vein as the Patek Philippe Graves Super Complication or the Vacheron Constantin Farouk.
Pratt was a contemporary of George Daniels with whom he had long telephone conversations each Sunday, where each exchanged experiences and challenges faced in their respective pursuit of chronometry. Even though not officially recognized by Daniels, the latter consulted Pratt on many of his innovations and Pratt even made some components for him.
Derek Pratt’s oeuvre however was never completed under his own name but that of the newly reborn Urban Jürgensen & Sonner brand (based in Switzerland) as the latter’s technical director from 1982 to 2005.
Pratt designed complications for Urban Jürgensen and even created the brand’s beautiful guilloché dials. However, his true passion laid in pocket watches and the pursuit of chronometry, a passion that materialized under the form of the sublime tourbillon pocket watches he made for the brand.
Pratt earned a number of awards throughout his lifetime including Freeman of England’s Worshipful Company of Clockmakers (1979), Liveryman of the society (1982), silver medal of British Horological Institute (1992), the MIH’s Prix Gaïa for artisanal creation (1999), and the Tompion gold medal of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers (2005).
In an article published in April 1993 in the Horological Journal, Pratt specified the genesis for this oval watch “As a child I had been fascinated by oval tins. My own interest in oval watches stems right back to those examples, but on seeing the oval Breguet N°1682/4761 [made in 1822 to Count Nikita Petrovich Panin and subsequently sold to the famous pianist Arthur Rubinstein] I felt positively inspired and resolved to make an oval watch myself… The watch was mostly realized as an homage to some of the most preeminent watchmakers of all time, like Abraham-Louis Breguet, John Arnold, and Professor Alfred Helwig.”
Pratt was looking to achieve symmetrical aesthetics with highly legible indications: central hours/minutes hands, a large subseconds at 6 o’clock, a power reserve indicator on the left part of the dial, a thermometer on the right section and a moonphase display at noon.
The challenge Pratt undertook was to first design a watch and then the movement, making his task even more difficult and the final result even more impressive.
Pratt started work on the piece in 1982 not only at a time where pocket watches were a novelty but where mechanical watches were still struggling to survive following the tsunami of cheap quartz watches that had hit the industry hard.
Pratt not shying away from painstaking work made the watch entirely by hand, using traditional techniques and hand operated tools and machines starting with sheets of metal and brass cutting, milling, filing and polishing each individual component by hand.
The movement features a tourbillon visible through the back, but not “just” a tourbillon but a detent escapement with remontoire (constant force). In the Horological Journal, vol. 134, no 1, published in July 1991, Pratt write “many remontoire mechanisms have been made over the last 300 hundred years or so but, as far as I know, this watch is the first to have a remontoire incorporated in the carriage of a tourbillon and is, therefore, something new or innovative”.
The remontoire is a constant force device enabling an equal flow of energy from the barrel to the movement ensuring that regardless the state of wind of the watch the same level of energy is provided resulting in greater accuracy. This mechanism is very difficult to manufacture and requires extremely tight tolerances. After manufacturing, the parts have to be assembled and regulated very precisely.
The Oval also features a detent (or chronometer) escapement, a grail of chronometry and the result of a historical pursuit for precision, the detent escapement is one of the most accurate types of escapements. Developed in the mid-18th Century, it was mostly used in marine chronometers.
In the detent escapement, the balance wheel swings undisturbed during most of its cycle, except the brief impulse period, which is only given once per cycle. It runs virtually without friction and the escape wheel teeth do not require oiling.
The dial of the Oval watch is also a gem of design and craftsmanship, it is divided into three parts – all made of solid silver – and fixed onto the main plate with four screws at two, four, eight, and 10 o’clock. It incorporates a cutout for the moon phase at 12 o’clock, the hour chapter ring, and an overlapping large seconds counter at 6 o’clock.
Pratt had developed a fascination for guillochage and he made the engine turned dial by hand while the indications are hand engraved and inked. Imagine that the cut-out for the moon phase was sawn out by hand and reworked with a file and one can start to fathom the mind boggling hand work that went into the creation of this masterpiece.
The case was also fully hand made by Pratt, the original case was in silver (which accompanies this piece), subsequently a platinum (in which the present watch is cased) and pink gold case were produced between 2005 and 2006 by Bruno Affolter, a case maker in La Chaux-de-Fonds now known as Les Artisans Boîtiers.
One of the biggest challenges Pratt met was surprisingly finding a company that could make a large oval shaped crystal, a task that no one agreed to undertake considering the difficulty. Consequently, like he had done for the case, dial and movement, Pratt set out to create the crystals himself, including the one in the back that has the extra difficulty of bearing two holes for winding and setting the watch.
In 1993 the watch – although unfinished - was presented in the Basel Watch fair to critical acclaim, however it wasn’t until 12 years later, in 2005 - 23 years after it was started - that the watch was fully finished.
However, in 2004 with declining health Pratt handed the watch to Kari Voutilainen – whom after having worked with Pratt at Urban Jürgensen had set up his own workshops – to apply the final touches to the watch including the superlative and mind bending finish that can be found on the movement, including the underdial.
Pratt was so proud of this watch that he added a sketch of it to his business card.
The Oval watch is not only Pratt’s magnum opus but a masterpiece in every sense. A watch that defines horological finesse, complexity and tradition.
A watch that the cognoscenti whisper about with knowing nods, a watch that since 2005 has been in the private collection of Dr. Helmut Crott, one of the world’s most prominent collectors and scholars. A watch that is making its auction debut over 40 years after it was started and 20 years since its finish.
A watch of which there is not only no other example of but also nothing even similarly close and as such its appearance offers an opportunity for the collector to obtain a unique crown jewel as there is not another one, and it is highly likely that once this watch is sold it will not grace the auction market for decades to come.
