Everything about the original piece was special. The fact that it was ordered by one of Marie Antoinette’s secret admirers. The fact that she didn't know it was being made. The fact she never did receive it. The watch took 44 years to make, and both Marie Antoinette and Abraham-Louis Breguet were dead when it was completed. One of the reasons it took so long to make is because Breguet was given no deadline for finishing it. As long as it was a perpetual calendar, a symbol of his everlasting love for her, and that any part that could be made in gold would be made in gold, Breguet had, in watchmaking terms, carte blanche - John Biggs tells this fascinating story in full in his book "Marie Antoinette's Watch: Adultery, Larceny, & Perpetual Motion."