On the evening of September 24 world-renowned watch brand, Breguet, celebrated the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums' announcement of the curation of "Breguet: Art & Innovation in Watchmaking" to launch in September 2015 at the Legion of Honor.
This historic exhibition marks the largest collection of Breguet antique timepieces ever to be shown in the Americas. An exquisite evening gala began with cocktails at the Tourbillon Boutique San Francisco in where VIP Guests were given a preview of the exhibition with a rare look at three historic Breguet timepieces from the Breguet museum in Place Vendome, Paris: Breguet N°2655, Breguet N°3519 and Breguet N°4111.
The festivities continued from the boutique in Union Square, San Francisco, to the Legion of Honor, where guests arrived to a sunset view of the Golden Gate bridge to enjoy a private dinner at the museum—the location of the future exhibition.
In attendance to mark the occasion of this ground-breaking partnership were members of the Board of Directors of Montres Breguet and representatives of the Legion of Honor. Remarks were given regarding the importance of this collaboration in furthering the mission of the museum, as well as the watch brand's passion for preservation of arts and culture worldwide.
Spanning fifty years of horological innovations by founder, Abraham-Louis Breguet (often regarded as the "Father of Modern Horology"), the future exhibition will showcase antique Breguet timepieces as well as instruments of measurements.
Best known for its marquee innovation, the tourbillon—a device that neutralizes the negative effects of gravity in pocket watches, the expansive exhibition will also feature a wide array of pocket watches, travel clocks, as well as rare prototypes.
The collection will educate the viewer on the ingenious mind of a watchmaker who gave the world more than watches—it left a timeless legacy of innovative engineering. In a time before electricity lit Parisian streets to become the City of Lights, the Breguet workshop on 39 Quai de l'Horloge, was creating fashion-forward and technologically advanced timekeeping devices that revolutionized the concept of personal timekeeping.
From Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, to Queen Victoria, to Tsar Alexander I, Breguet was the premier watchmaker to all of Europe's nobility from the late 18th to early 19th centuries.
