Gilt-brass and Leather Cased Verge Watch with Alarm [Case and Outer Case not original]

Record summary

Held and catalogued by British Museum (object number 1958,1201.455), this is an alarm watch by Thomas Tompion, made in London (England), dated 1676 - 1680 (movement). The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Pocket Watches collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: metal, gold, leather. Recorded dimensions: Diameter: 57.80 millimetres (case) Diameter: 47.40 millimetres (dial) Diameter: 71.50 millimetres (outer leather case) Thickness: 44.40 millimetres. The record is illustrated with 6 photographs.

Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.

Catalogue description

Atlas type guide

Verge and pair-cased watches

After Christiaan Huygens and Robert Hooke applied the balance spring around 1675, the verge watch became a reasonably reliable timekeeper and the minute hand became standard. Through the eighteenth century the typical English watch was a pair-cased verge: a fusee movement with a pierced, engraved balance cock, housed in an inner case and a separate protective outer case, often of repoussé gold, shagreen, tortoiseshell or enamel.

French watches of the same period were thicker 'oignons', later replaced by elegant thinner watches following Jean-Antoine Lépine's bar-bridge calibre of c. 1770. Dutch, Swiss and German makers supplied international markets, and verge watches were made until the mid-nineteenth century as cheaper alternatives to the cylinder and lever.

General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.

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