# Breguet No. 160, the Marie-Antoinette > Begun by Abraham-Louis Breguet, completed by the successor house under Antoine-Louis Breguet - Ordered 1783; completed 1827 on the modern firm's account. The holding museum gives 1820; the Breguet house Notice of 1887 gives 1802. > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/abraham-louis-breguet/breguet-no-160-marie-antoinette/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-27 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Begun by Abraham-Louis Breguet, completed by the successor house under Antoine-Louis Breguet - **Date:** Ordered 1783; completed 1827 on the modern firm's account. The holding museum gives 1820; the Breguet house Notice of 1887 gives 1802. - **Medium:** Gold, rock crystal, white enamel and sapphire. Gold plates, bridges, wheels and balance spring; sapphire bearings; front and back crystals of rock crystal rather than glass. - **Dimensions:** Not published in the sources consulted for this record. Figures in circulation are frequently the dimensions of the 2008 re-edition No. 1160 and are not adopted here. - **Object type:** Clocks and instruments - **Period:** French, ordered 1783, completed 1827 - **Current location:** L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem - **Attribution:** workshop ## Summary The most famous watch in the world was ordered in 1783 by an officer of the Queen's Guards whose name was never entered in the register, with instructions to build in every complication then known, to substitute gold for other metals wherever it could be done, and to observe no limit on either the time taken or the price. It was finished forty-four years later, in 1827, four years after Abraham-Louis Breguet's death and thirty-four years after the execution of the queen it is named for. It is his commission and his design. It is not his completed work, and no honest description of it can call it his masterpiece.In April 1983 a single burglar took it from the L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem along with 105 other clocks and watches, bypassing the museum's security, which is as much as the museum itself publishes. The sources do not agree on the night: the museum says only that staff found the collection gone on the morning of Sunday 17 April. It came back twenty-three years later not through police work but through a deathbed confession, a lawyer acting for an anonymous woman, and a payment made by the museum to recover its own property.It has never been sold at auction. Every figure quoted for its value, including the thirty million dollars that appears in almost every article written about it, is journalism rather than a price. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1783** An unnamed officer of the Queen's Guard, who commissioned it and never received it `[documented]` (commission) The order is recorded by the house: every known complication, gold substituted for other metals wherever possible, no limit on time or price. The client's name was withheld from the records at the time and is not established. Count Hans Axel von Fersen the Younger, an anonymous admirer and the naval minister de Castries are all in circulation as candidates; the holding museum and the firm's own 1887 Notice both give only an officer of the queen's guard. A specialist publication issued a formal correction in December 2024 clarifying that the Marie-Antoinette connection is legend rather than period documentation. - **1783-1827** The house of Breguet, Quai de l'Horloge, Paris `[documented]` (in build) Work interrupted by the Revolution and by Breguet's flight from Paris on 3 June 1793; the Breguet Notice of 1887 records the work as stopped from 1789 to 1795. The workshop records for 1775 to 1787 were destroyed in the Terror in 1794. Michel Weber recorded working 725 hours between 1812 and 1815 at 7,250 francs; the base movement credited to a maker recorded as Prudhomme. Abraham-Louis Breguet died on 17 September 1823 and the watch was completed in 1827 under his son Antoine-Louis Breguet. The holding museum gives 1820 and the firm's own 1887 Notice gives 1802. - **-1838** The Marquis de La Groye of Provins `[disputed]` (first recorded owner) The Breguet repair books record that on 11 March 1838 the Marquis de La Groye of Provins brought in his perpetuelle repeating watch No. 160. The Marquis had died without issue on 4 October 1837, five months earlier. Either the house booked the piece under its known owner's name after his death or a date in the books is wrong. How and when he acquired it is not recorded. - **1838-1887** Unknown; the watch is in the possession of the house of Breguet again by 1887 `[unknown]` (gap) No owner is documented between the repair-book entry of 1838 and the sale of 1887. How the watch passed from the Marquis de La Groye, or from whoever held it in 1838, back to the firm is not established in any source consulted. - **1887** Sir Spencer Brunton, then his brother `[documented]` (private sale) Madame Breguet sold No. 160 to Sir Spencer Brunton for 600 pounds in 1887, sixty years after the watch was completed. The Breguet house Notice of 24 October 1887 belongs to this transaction and is the document from which the 1802 completion date and the 30,000 franc factory cost descend. The watch afterwards passed to Brunton's brother. - **undated** Murray Marks, dealer and collector `[disputed]` (trade) Marks held the watch between the Brunton family and Salomons. The date on which it left him is contradictory in the source that reports it: the narrative gives a Christie's sale of 22 June 1896 and the same source's own ownership table gives 1918. The two are incompatible and neither is adopted here. - **1896 or 1918-1925** Sir David Lionel Goldsmid-Stern-Salomons, second baronet `[documented]` (collection) An electrical engineer and motoring pioneer who assembled roughly 124 Breguet pieces and published his own catalogue of them in 1921. It is because a single private collector concentrated the corpus that the largest holding of Breguet outside Paris is in Jerusalem, and it is why one burglary in 1983 could take 106 objects from one building. - **1925-1969** Vera Bryce Salomons `[documented]` (inheritance) The collection was SPLIT on Salomons' death in 1925, not passed whole: his daughter Vera Bryce Salomons received 57 of the roughly 124 Breguet pieces, No. 160 among them, and his widow Laura Julia received about seventy, which her heirs consigned to Christie's in London in three sales, 20 lots on 1 December 1964, 21 on 1 June 1965 and 20 on 2 November 1965. Vera Salomons founded the L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem in memory of Leo Aryeh Mayer, 1895 to 1959, head of the department of Islamic art and archaeology at the Hebrew University and its rector, who had been her own teacher. She died on 12 November 1969 and the museum opened in 1974, so her ownership cannot run to that date; the building was completed and filled by four charitable foundations she created under a will filed on Jersey. HOW the objects were given is disputed and no founding deed has been made public: the Hermann de Stern Foundation, a private Liechtenstein body she established, told Haaretz in 2020 that the items are not owned by the museum and never were and that ownership was transferred to the foundation by contracts in 1993 and 2010. Corrected 2026-09-27; this record previously said the collection passed to his daughter and that she left it to the museum. - **1974-1983** L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem `[documented]` (museum) The watches arrived at the museum in 1974. - **1983-2006** Naaman Diller, by theft; then his widow Nili Shamrat `[documented]` (theft) Taken with 105 other clocks and watches in April 1983. The museum publishes only that the thief bypassed its security mechanisms; the bent window bars, the disabled alarm and the guard's round are the Israeli police's account, given to the Associated Press in 2008, and are not reproduced here. Reported dates range from the night of 15 April, which the police gave, to the museum's own discovery on the morning of Sunday 17 April. Diller sold three of the 106 pieces and kept the rest in safe deposit boxes in Israel, Europe and the United States, several with his own handwritten servicing notes. He died of cancer in 2004 having told his wife what he had taken and where it was. - **2006-present** L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem `[documented]` (negotiated return) In August 2006 a lawyer acting for an unnamed woman arranged the return of a first group of objects including No. 160, for a sum reported as roughly 35,000 dollars in one account and about 40,000 in another; the reference literature gives 39 objects in that tranche. The recovery became public in late 2007 and a further 43 pieces were located in France and returned afterwards. The commonly cited total recovered is 96 of 106. Nobody was prosecuted in Israel for the burglary. Nili Shamrat was convicted in Los Angeles on 23 February 2010 of receiving stolen property and sentenced in March 2010 to five years of probation and 300 hours of community service, in a prosecution brought by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Major Fraud Division. The museum reopened its Salomons clock gallery in July 2009. The watch was lent to the Science Museum, London, for Versailles: Science and Splendour, which ran to 21 April 2025. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - No. 160 has never been offered at auction. It has never been sold on the open market at all. The only price in its recorded history is a private sale by the house in 1887. Every figure quoted as its value, including the thirty million dollars that appears in most coverage of the 1983 theft and the recovery, is an estimate produced by writers and not a transaction. It is recorded below as journalism and is deliberately absent from every price field in this record. - **1887** Private sale by the house of Breguet, not an auction, - Estimate: Not applicable - Hammer: GBP 600, a private sale price and not a hammer price - With premium: Not applicable; no buyer's premium arises in a private sale - Madame Breguet sold No. 160 to Sir Spencer Brunton for 600 pounds, sixty years after the watch was finished. The house had held it since 1827. This is the only documented price ever paid for the object. - **** , - The thirty million dollar figure. Wired used it in 2013 and the theft coverage uses it throughout. It rests on no auction result, insurance schedule, probate valuation, customs declaration or export valuation that appears in any source consulted here. The watch is in a museum that is not a seller and has never been offered. Treat it as journalism. ## Exhibitions - Versailles: Science and Splendour, Science Museum, London, 2024-2025 - Reopening of the Salomons clock gallery after the recovery, L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem, 2009 ## Literature - 1921, Sir David Salomons, Breguet (1747-1823), London, printed for the author. The collector's own catalogue of his Breguet holdings, written by the man who then owned No. 160. It prints the Breguet house Notice of 24 October 1887 from which the 1802 completion date and the 30,000 franc factory cost descend. - 1887, Breguet house Notice dated 24 October 1887, printed by Salomons in 1921. The firm's own description of the commission: ordered in 1783 by an officer in the Marie-Antoinette Guards, completed 1802, work stopped 1789 to 1795, factory costs 30,000 francs. ## Open questions - Who placed the order in 1783. The house record gives only an officer of the Queen's Guard and withheld the name at the time. Fersen, an anonymous admirer and the Marechal de Castries are all in circulation and none is archivally established. - When the watch was actually completed. The modern firm gives 1827, the holding museum gives 1820, and the Breguet house's own Notice of 24 October 1887 gives 1802. Three parties with standing, and the firm disagrees with itself across 134 years. - What it cost to build. 16,864 francs, 17,070 francs, 17,000 francs for labour alone and 30,000 francs as factory costs are all on the record and cannot be reconciled from the sources consulted. - Who the maker recorded as Prudhomme was, and what else he supplied to the house. The register credits him with the base movement of the most famous watch in the world and nothing further about him is established. - How No. 160 passed from the Marquis de La Groye, or from whoever held it in 1838, back into the possession of the house by 1887. The chain between the repair-book entry and the Brunton sale is empty. - Whether Murray Marks sold the watch to Salomons in 1896 or held it until 1918. The same source gives both, in its narrative and in its own table. - The physical dimensions of No. 160. No source consulted publishes them, and figures in circulation are frequently those of the 2008 re-edition. - Where the ten objects still missing from the 1983 theft are. Ninety-six of 106 are the commonly cited recovery figure. - Whether the secret signature is present on this object, and where. Salomons describes the technique in detail but the sources consulted do not state its presence on No. 160. - Whether the 39 objects reported in the first 2006 tranche and the 43 later returned from France are cumulative or overlapping. The published numbers do not add cleanly to 96. ## Sources - [1] Quill & Pad, 'Let Them Eat Cake: The Intriguing Story Of Marie Antoinette And Her Legendary Breguet Pocket Watch No. 160', reprise of 13 June 2020. Source for the 1783 order and its terms, the complication list and materials, the base movement credited to Prudhomme, Michel Weber's 725 hours at 7,250 francs between 1812 and 1815, the completion in 1827 under Antoine-Louis Breguet, the build cost of 16,864 francs with alternatives of 17,000 and 30,000, the repair-book entry of 11 March 1838 naming the Marquis de La Groye who had died on 4 October 1837, the 1887 sale to Sir Spencer Brunton for 600 pounds, the Murray Marks and Salomons ownership with the Christie's sale of 22 June 1896, the Salomons collection of about 124 pieces, the arrival at the L. A. Mayer Museum in 1974, and the replica No. 1160. NOTE: this source's narrative and its own ownership table disagree on the Marks and Salomons dates, and it names Count Axel von Fersen as the client where the house record gives an unnamed officer of the Queen's Guard. - [2] The Naked Watchmaker, 'The Marie-Antoinette N. 1160: an abbreviated story of a surreal history', 2 May 2020. Source for the commission by an unnamed admirer, the completion in 1827 thirty-four years after the Queen's death and four years after Breguet's, the complication list, the recovery in December 2007, the 2004 commission of the replica by Nicolas G. Hayek, and the April 2008 presentation in a case carved from the wood of the Versailles oak. - [3] Wikipedia, 'Marie Antoinette (watch)'. TERTIARY and used only for the range of figures in circulation, each flagged in the text: the naming of Axel von Fersen, a completion date of 1802, a theft date of 17 April 1983, a first-tranche recovery figure of 39 of 106, a factory cost of 30,000 francs, an 823-component count for the replica, a comparison with Breguet No. 92 at 4,800 francs, and the 30 million dollar valuation attributed to Wired in 2013. To be replaced with the primary in every case. - [4] Sir David Salomons, Breguet (1747-1823), London, printed for the author, 1921, 3 volumes, 662 pages. Internet Archive scan of the University of California copy, identifier breguet01salo. The catalogue of the collector who owned No. 160, and the printed source of the Breguet house Notice of 24 October 1887 giving the order in 1783 by an officer in the Marie-Antoinette Guards, completion in 1802, work stopped 1789 to 1795, and factory costs of 30,000 francs. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Naaman Diller'. TERTIARY, used for the theft and recovery narrative and flagged as such; its own claims are attributed there to Smithsonian Magazine, The Guardian, Wired and the Museum for Islamic Art. Source for the night of 15 to 16 April 1983, the 106 objects, the inoperative alarm and the bent window bars, Diller's biography including the 1967 Tel Aviv bank robbery, his death from cancer in 2004, the August 2006 return of 39 objects for roughly 35,000 or about 40,000 dollars, the identification of Nili Shamrat and her five years probation, the total of 96 of 106 recovered, and the reopening of the Salomons clock gallery in July 2009. - [6] Science Museum, London, 'Versailles: Science and Splendour', exhibition page. Source for the loan display of the watch in London to 21 April 2025 and for the museum's own description of it as the world's most famous watch, designed for Marie Antoinette. - [7] Wikimedia Commons file page for File:Watch MET 73555.jpg, which reproduces the Metropolitan Museum of Art's own catalogue record for accession 17.101.14 including the artist prefix 'Probably by an imitator of'. Licence verified as CC0 from extmetadata.LicenseShortName at fetch time. - [8] Wikimedia Commons file page for File:Pocket watch MET 219745.jpg, reproducing the Metropolitan Museum of Art's catalogue record for accession 1979.498.1, Firm of Breguet et Fils, about 1900. Licence verified as CC0. - [9] Wikimedia Commons API, used to verify extmetadata.LicenseShortName per file for every plate proposed in this record. Public domain and CC0 only. - [10] The Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem, 'The Great Clock Robbery', museum website. The holder's own account of the theft and the recovery, and the source used here for the discovery on the morning of Sunday 17 April 1983, for the 106 rare clocks from the Sir David Salomons collection including the Marie Antoinette clock, for the Israeli police finding that Naaman Diller (Lidor) bypassed the museum's security mechanisms and carried out the heist single-handedly, for the safes in the United States, in Europe and in Ramla, for Diller's account to his wife a few days before he died of cancer in 2004, for the Tel Aviv arts dealer and the lawyer who telephoned in August 2006, for the return of 39 items including the Marie Antoinette clock after brief negotiations, for the restoration under the watchmaker Boris Sankov, and for the reopening of the Salomons display in July 2009. NOTE: the museum publishes no window, alarm or guard detail, no sum of money, and no recovery total, and it does not name Nili Shamrat. - [11] Aron Heller, Associated Press, 'Never too late: Israeli cops finally name time bandit who stole clocks', 3 November 2008, from the reporter's own archive of his Associated Press work. Source for the Israeli police case in the words of the police: the naming of Naaman Diller, that police had thought of him as a possible suspect in 1983 but found nothing to link him to the robbery and that he died of cancer in the United States in 2004, that the museum told investigators it paid some 40,000 dollars to an anonymous American woman to buy back 40 of the items including the Marie Antoinette watch, that the artistic director Rachel Hasson called the fee symbolic, the identification of Nili Shamrat in Los Angeles as Diller's widow, the lifting of the gag order in late October 2008, and the investigator Oded Yaniv's estimate that about 40 clocks were still missing. The same report carries the Israeli police account of the entry on the night of 15 April 1983, which this record does not reproduce because the holding museum publishes no such detail. - [12] Associated Press, '43 rare clocks stolen from Israel found in France', published by the Arizona Daily Star, 20 November 2008. Source for the 43 further clocks found in French bank vaults and due to return to Israel, for the police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld giving 96 of the 106 recovered, and for the museum director Rachel Hasson on the pieces found. It repeats from Israeli investigators that the museum paid about 40,000 dollars to an anonymous American woman to buy back 40 items including the Marie Antoinette watch. - [13] Fern Reiss, Smithsonian Magazine, 'The Time Thief Who Stole 106 Rare Clocks in a Daring Heist', 14 April 2023. Source for the figure of 35,000 dollars paid for 39 clocks including the Marie Antoinette watch, for 96 of 106 recovered with the fate of the rest unknown, and for the account that Diller was eliminated as a suspect in 1983 on a passport alibi that investigators later concluded he had forged. NOTE: this article gives only 'a spring night in April 1983' and fixes no night. The Associated Press reporting the Israeli police gives the night of 15 April and the museum gives only the discovery on the morning of Sunday 17 April, so this record dates the step to April 1983 and names the museum's discovery rather than choosing a night. - [14] United Press International, 'Widow sentenced in Israeli museum heist', 2 March 2010. Source for the sentence passed on Nili Shamrat in Los Angeles of five years probation and 300 hours of community service after a conviction for receiving stolen property. - [15] Claims Journal, 'Tarzana Woman Convicted in Stolen Museum Artifacts Case', 2 March 2010, reporting the California Department of Insurance. Source for the conviction of Nili Shamrat on 23 February 2010 for receiving stolen property, for the prosecution by the Major Fraud Division of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, and for 96 of 106 objects recovered. - [16] The Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem, 'Watches collection: In Search of Lost Time', exhibition page. The holder's own present description of the Salomons gallery, and the source used here for the collection of about 200 items with 55 pieces by Abraham-Louis Breguet, for the gift by Vera Bryce Salomons, and for the museum's catalogue line on the self-winding watch No. 160 under the inventory mark WA 69, which the museum dates to a completion in 1820. - [17] Boodle Hatfield, 'Boodle Hatfield advises the L.A Mayer Museum for Islamic Art on the loan of Marie Antoinette's jewelled watch', 27 November 2024. The lending museum's own solicitors on the London loan; source for the run of 12 December 2024 to 21 April 2025 and for the statement that the arrival in London was the first time the watch had voyaged abroad since its safe return to the museum in 2008. NOTE: that 2008 date sits against the museum's own account of a return in August 2006 and is not adopted here. - [18] Jane Desborough, Science Museum blog, 'Fit for a Queen: Famous Marie Antoinette Breguet watch will travel to London for new exhibition', 19 November 2024. The borrowing museum's own curator on the loan, its dates and the 2006 approach by a lawyer. NOTE: this post counts 100 watches with several paintings and a few books taken in 1983, where the holding museum counts 106 clocks, and it says the thief was never caught. - [19] Carlos Torres, SJX Watches, 'In Depth: Breguet No. 160 Montre d Or', 23 March 2026. Used only as the most recent published study of the watch located, and for its acknowledgement of the L. A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art in Jerusalem for access and high-resolution images, which is the latest dated indication found that the Jerusalem museum holds it. The article itself carries no statement of the watch's present location. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.