Hunter pocket watch by James William Benson, England, 1886

Record summary

Held and catalogued by Museo Galileo, Florence (object number Inv. 3862), this is a hunter pocket watch by James William Benson, made in London, England, dated 1886. The Atlas places it in the Industrial Revolution period (1850 – 1900) of its Pocket Watches collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: gold. Recorded dimensions: diameter 53 mm; thickness 15.5 mm. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.

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

Hunter, half-hunter and open-face watches

In the nineteenth century the pocket watch case settled into a few standard forms. The hunter (French savonnette) has a hinged front lid protecting the crystal — reputedly for riders who could not risk broken glass — and is opened by pressing the crown or a push-piece. The half-hunter has a small window in the lid so the hands can be read when closed. The open-face (lépine) watch has no front cover, with the crown at 12; hunters normally carry the crown at 3.

Case types also changed with winding: key-wound watches gave way to keyless (stem-wound) mechanisms after Adrien Philippe's and others' designs of the 1840s, with pendant setting or lever setting.

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.