On/off sale of £1.6m watch winds up owner
Timepiece left languishing in safe deposit box as plan to put it on show at Science Museum lies in tatters
THE original purchase was controversial enough, bought secretly in 1808 by George III from a brilliant French watchmaker in the middle of the Napoleonic wars and smuggled into Britain.
But the sale last year at Sotheby’s of the Breguet Four Minute Tourbillon watch for £1.6m has created an international storm as extraordinary as its original purchase.
Plans for the watch to be bought for the nation and go on display at the Science Museum in London now lie in tatters, with its owner in a bitter dispute with the Government and the descendants of Abraham-louis Breguet, the genius who made it.
The watch, recognised as one of the most important timepieces ever constructed, now languishes in a safe deposit box somewhere in the UK and may never be seen again in public.
A Telegraph investigation has established that the watch was bought at auction by a London dealer on behalf of John Hawkins, a 79-year-old retired British Army officer turned antiques trader, now living in Tasmania. Mr Hawkins declined to comment on one claim that the watch was ultimately destined for a prospective Far East buyer.
Mr Hawkins applied for an export licence to take the watch abroad but was temporarily blocked from doing so after the Arts Council ruled that its provenance and its “outstanding significance” as “a tour-de-force of the art of horology” should give a British buyer the chance to match its value.
An appeal was launched in January to find £2.4m needed to keep the watch in the United Kingdom.
Step forward the House of Breguet, run by one of M Breguet’s descendants and now owned by Swatch, the world’s biggest watchmaker, which offered to purchase the timepiece for the nation and display it in the Science Museum – provided that for 60 days a year the company could show it off at promotional exhibitions around the world and at its Paris flagship store.
It is understood that in the summer the House of Breguet then engaged Mishcon de Reya, the London law firm, to begin its due diligence process with a view to buying the watch from Mr Hawkins.
An invoice seen by The Daily
Telegraph shows the watch was bought at auction by George Somlo, owner of Somlo Antiques Ltd, a reputable dealer who operates out of the Burlington Arcade in Piccadilly. The hammer price at auction was £1.3m with an additional buyer’s premium including VAT of £330,000. Daniel Somlo, Mr Somlo’s son who works in the family business, said: “I cannot disclose anything about it. The watch is not in our possession. We have been asked to keep tightlipped about it. We do not have access to it and are not involved in it any more.”
The Sotheby’s invoice shows payments for the watch were to be made in three instalments of £543,000.
The Telegraph tracked down the watch’s owner, Mr Hawkins, who is a former president of the Australian Antique & Art Dealers Association. He lives in Chudleigh, Tasmania. Mr Hawkins said he was so incensed by what he described as a threatening letter from the law firm that he has now withdrawn his export licence application and, for the time being, decided to keep the watch at a secure location in the UK.
“I bought it and then applied for an export licence,” said Mr Hawkins, who explained that Mr Somlo had acted as his agent at the auction, partly because Covid had made it impossible for him to travel to London to bid for it in person. The House of Breguet made its offer to keep the watch in the UK at the Science Museum but on condition it could be taken abroad for two months of the year, said Mr Hawkins. He then received a letter from Mishcon de Reya, acting for the House of Breguet, which he claims “suggested all sorts of unpleasant things about me and my behaviour”. He said that he considered the letter to be “threatening” and as a result he had “withdrawn the watch from export”.
“The watch is in the UK and will remain in the UK. It will remain in a safe deposit box until the matter is resolved. I am still hoping I shall have the right to export it,” said Mr Hawkins.
Mr Hawkins went on to claim: “They are just trying to buy it for less than I paid for it and that is totally unacceptable. If they offered me £2.4m I would sell it to them but they are not offering me that.” He is upset that the French company has been given a deal to take the watch out of the country for a number of days a year and that no matching offer has been made to him. “I am not vindictive and I am not difficult,” he said, “I just bought a wonderful object and I am suffering from a bureaucratic decision that makes no sense.”
Mishcon de Reya declined to comment and Breguet could not be reached for a response. But a source close to the French watchmakers insisted that Breguet was offering to match the sum of £2.4m set by the Government to buy the timepiece for the nation. He said the deal had included taking the watch overseas for a number of days each year. He said Mishcon de Reya had simply sought to ensure the watch’s ownership before proceeding but had not received a response.
The Arts Council confirmed that the export licence application had been withdrawn.