Footnotes

Paul Iribe is acknowledged as being one of the pioneering influences on Art Deco style. Initially, he was best known for his caricatures featured in various Parisian journals, including Le Cride Paris, Le Rire and Le Temoin. However, his career made a significant change in direction in 1912, when he was commissioned by the Couturier, Jacques Doucet, to fully furnish his apartment in the centre of Paris. Three of these furniture pieces are still exhibited in the Musee des Decoratifs, Paris.

Despite these initial successes, but perhaps with the onset of the First World War, Iribe emigrated to Hollywood in order to design stage sets for Cecil B De. Mille including the 1923 film, "The Ten Commandments."

Upon his return to Paris, he met Coco Chanel. It is widely thought that his affair with Chanel was the reason Iribe divorced again in 1928. He had been married twice already, first to actress and variety entertainer, Jeanne Dirys and later to the heiress, Maybelle Hogan. Chanel and Iribe shared the same strong and controversial nationalist political views. In fact, the main recurring character in the satirical cartoons he drew for the art magazine, Le Temoin ,('The Witness') is Marianne, the 'anthropomorphised symbol' of France, and she bares a striking resemblance to Chanel.

In 1933, now in his 50s, Iribe also collaborated with Coco Chanel in the design of a jewellery collection commissioned by the International Guild of Diamond Merchants. The 'Bijoux de Diamants' collection, designed almost entirely in diamonds and platinum, was based on the very 'Hollywood' themes of knots, stars, and feathers. The collection was exhibited Chanel's own home in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré in Paris and drew enormous crowds. It can be no coincidence that this watch was bought by Iribe in the same year.

The Breguet Certificate states that this watch was sold to Monsieur Paul Iribe on the 22nd December 1933 for the sum of 10,800 francs.