# The Queen Who Never Saw the Watch That Carries Her Name > Breguet No. 160 is called the Marie-Antoinette. Nothing from the queen's lifetime connects her to it: the firm's records call it a gold watch, and the name is datable to a London shop window in 1917. > The Study - 2026-09-25 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-queen-who-never-saw-the-watch/ ## Key points - The most famous watch in the world is named for a woman whom no document from her own lifetime connects to it. Breguet's company records call the object a gold watch, or a perpetuelle minute repeater. They do not call it the Marie-Antoinette. - The celebrated instructions attached to the order - every complication then known, gold instead of brass, no limit of time or price - first appear in a notice dated 24 October 1887, written by Edward Brown, the firm's later proprietor, a hundred and four years after the order is supposed to have been placed. - The name itself is datable to a shop window. Sir David Lionel Salomons wrote that on 3 May 1917, near Regent Street, he saw an unusual watch in a window with a notice beside it bearing the name Marie Antoinette. He printed the name in 1921 and every later writer descends from that book. - Axel von Fersen is not a disputed attribution but an unattributed one. The word Fersen does not occur once in Salomons's 1921 catalogue, Breguet's own house does not make the claim, and no source we found names who first did or when. - The Breguet the queen demonstrably owned is a different watch: No. 179, a plain gold quarter repeater sold to her on 4 September 1792 for 960 francs, while she was a prisoner. It cost about one eighteenth of the recorded labour cost of No. 160. ## An object can be named for a woman who never touched it ## The 1783 order is three words in a ledger ## The famous instructions were written down in 1887 ## Fersen is not a disputed attribution, he is an unattributed one ## The name begins in a shop window on 3 May 1917 ## Four completion dates, four costs, and who says which ## The watch she did own cost 960 francs ## Three objects named for women, and the evidence behind each name ## What the queen is actually doing in this record ## Why this archive is free to read The watch is real, the machine is extraordinary, and the queen is a label. Breguet's own archive calls it a gold watch. The instructions everyone quotes were written by Edward Brown in 1887. The name was read off a notice in a wet London window on 3 May 1917 and printed in 1921, and the only Breguet Marie-Antoinette can be shown to have bought is a plain repeater that cost her 960 francs in a prison cell. An object's name is a claim, it can be graded like any other claim, and this one grades as undocumented after a century of repetition. ## Questions **Did Marie-Antoinette own the Breguet watch named after her?** No. No document from her lifetime connects her to Breguet No. 160. Breguet's own company records describe the object as a gold watch, and the firm's family historian calls the order story an oral tradition first written down in the late nineteenth century. The watch was finished in 1820 or 1827, decades after her execution in 1793. **Who ordered the Marie-Antoinette watch?** Nobody knows. Breguet's workshop records for 1775 to 1787 were destroyed in 1794 and no client name was entered in the register. Emmanuel Breguet, the keeper of the house archive, writes that the identity of the man remains a mystery and raises the king and a hostile faction as live alternatives to an officer of the guard. **Was it commissioned by Axel von Fersen?** There is no evidence for it. The name Fersen does not appear once in Salomons's 1921 catalogue, which is the book that made the watch famous, and Breguet's own house does not make the claim. Every source that repeats it hedges, and no source names who first made the identification or when. **When was the watch first called the Marie-Antoinette?** The earliest datable use of the name is a label in a London shop window that Sir David Lionel Salomons read on 3 May 1917 and described in print in 1921. Before that, Edward Brown had described the watch at the Vienna Exposition of 1873 as made for a marquis of the queen's guard, and used the phrase Marie-Antoinette Guards in a notice of 24 October 1887. **Which Breguet did Marie-Antoinette actually buy?** Watch No. 179, a plain gold quarter repeater in a savonette case, sold to her on 4 September 1792 for 960 francs while she was held at the Temple prison. It ended up in the same Salomons collection as No. 160. ## Sources - [1] Emmanuel Breguet, keeper of the Breguet archive, "The 'Marie-Antoinette' watch No. 160", Quai de l'Horloge, edition no. 10, for the oral tradition first written down in the late nineteenth century, the unknown identity of the client, the firm's own description of the object, the 1827 completion and the figure of 17,000 gold francs for labour alone. - [2] Breguet, house history, "Order of watch no. 160, known as the Marie-Antoinette watch", for the firm's public account of the 1783 order by an officer of the Queen's Guards whose name has remained unknown, and for the single mention of Axel de Fersen as a customer rather than as the client. - [3] Sir David Lionel Salomons, Breguet, 1747-1823 (London: printed for the author, 1921), for the contents of the notice dated 24 October 1887, catalogue entry 56; the account of the shop window near Regent Street on 3 May 1917; the absence of the name Fersen anywhere in the text; and catalogue entry 65, watch No. 179 sold to the queen on 4 September 1792 for 960 francs. Full scan read as plain text. - [4] L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem, catalogue entry for Breguet No. 160, Paris, 1783-1820, giving a diameter of 60 mm, the signature Breguet et Fils, and the statement that the watch is said to have been ordered by an officer of the guard of Queen Marie Antoinette. - [5] L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem, museum page for the watch, for the hedged tradition that others say the client was Fersen, who it was rumoured was the queen's lover. - [6] Science Museum, London, blog by Jane Desborough, Keeper of Science, presenting the order wording as recorded speech of the client, without a source for the quotations, and giving 1827 as the completion date. - [7] Carlos Torres, "Breguet No. 160", Watches by SJX, March 2026, written with the cooperation of the L. A. Mayer Museum, for the terse order-book notation No. 160, Montre d'Or between the Comte de Lort and the Duc de Praslin, the absence of any primary source from 1783 connecting the watch to the queen, Bernard Roobaert's tracking of the attribution to Salomons in 1921, and Michel Weber's 725 hours for 7,250 francs. - [8] Rodama, "The Marie-Antoinette watch", October 2016, reporting Bernard Roobaert's study, the 1887 notice in the hand of Edward Brown, and Brown's certificate of 1893 naming Monsieur de la Groie and giving 1798 as the completion. - [9] National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors message board, collector compilation of Bernard Roobaert's study and Emmanuel Breguet, for the 1873 Vienna Exposition description, the absence of any Marie-Antoinette connection at Paris 1827, Paris 1855 and London 1862, and the size objection. Secondary compilation; the exposition catalogues were not located. - [10] Quill and Pad, "The intriguing story of Marie Antoinette and her legendary Breguet pocket watch no. 160", quoting George Daniels, The Art of Breguet, on the workbook showing completion in 1820 at a cost of 16,864 francs and on Michel Weber's 725 hours. - [11] Emile Campardon, Marie-Antoinette a la Conciergerie (du 1er aout au 16 octobre 1793): pieces originales conservees aux Archives de l'Empire (1864), for the record of the objects found in her pocket on 2 August 1793, the first item being a notebook whose first leaf carries Breguet's address on the quai de l'Horloge; for Rosalie Lamorliere's account of the gold watch brought from Austria in 1770, hung on a nail in the cell and taken from her four or five days after she arrived; and for the inventory taken after her death on 26 Vendemiaire an II, which lists no timepiece. Full scan read as plain text. - [12] Chateau de Versailles, collection record for the pendule dite aux aiglons, inventory T 540 C, Petit Trianon, movement by Robert Robin, bronzes by Pierre-Philippe Thomire and design by Jean-Demosthene Dugourc, delivered in 1788 for Marie-Antoinette's bedroom; and the same collection's records citing the etat des pendules de la reine Marie-Antoinette drawn up in 1793 when grading other objects. - [13] Marguerite Jallut, "Les collections de Marie-Antoinette", Arts asiatiques 20 (1969), 209-220, for the disappearance at the Revolution of the inventory registers of the Queen's furniture and collections, seized from Bonnefoy du Plan who had charge of them, and for the revolutionary documents that stand in their place.