![Silver and tortoise-shell pair-cased clock-watch with hour-striking and date indicator [dial and outer case not original] — view 1 of 4](/__l5e/assets-v1/9eb04e96-46c2-4e7d-a3a4-a4e01478ac46/silver-and-tortoise-shell-pair-cased-clock-watch-with-hour-striking-an-3fa58c-1.jpg)
Pocket Watches · Clock-watch
Silver and tortoise-shell pair-cased clock-watch with hour-striking and date indicator [dial and outer case not original]
- Maker / attribution
- Edward East (Made by)
- Date
- 1645–1655
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- England
- Place
- London (England)
- Object type
- Clock-watch
- Materials / technique
- brass, tortoise-shell, silver
- Holding institution
- British Museum
- Accession / object no.
- 1888,1201.215
- Credit line
- British Museum, London
- Catalogue title (original)
- Silver and tortoise-shell pair-cased clock-watch with hour-striking and date indicator [dial and outer case not original] (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by British Museum (object number 1888,1201.215), this is a clock-watch by Edward East, made in London (England), dated 1645–1655. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Pocket Watches collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: brass, tortoise-shell, silver. The record is illustrated with 4 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
Description — British Museum
FRAME Circular plates with four pierced Egyptian pillars. A separate V-shaped bridge on the front of the pillar-plate for the 4th and 5th wheels of the striking train. GOING-TRAIN Gilt-brass barrel with tangent-screw set-up on the outside of the potence-plate, the silver index disc engraved 1-8. Fusee with gut-line and English stop-work. Three-wheel train; only the great-wheel is original. ESCAPEMENT Verge escapement, all the components replaced except for the counter-potence. The balance cock is also replaced. CALENDAR A steel pinion on the dial wheel drives an intermediate calendar wheel [now missing]. A pin on this wheel indexes the engraved calendar ring. STRIKING TRAIN Count-wheel striking for hours only, with warned release. Six wheel train terminating with a pinion with a roller, powered by a fixed barrel. DIAL AND HANDS Silver dial plate with three lugs for bayonet attachment. Silver champlevé dial with Roman hours I-XII surrounding a quarter-circle. At XII a rectangular calendar aperture. Finely matted centre with en engraved rosette around the hole. This dial is probably a replacement. Replacement blued-steel hand. CASES Silver inner case pierced and engraved with a design of realistic flowers and foliage. Hinged. split glazed bezel. Silver pendant and loose ring. Inside the back a bell. Later tortoise-shell covered brass outer case. Silver rims etc., and silver piqué decoration. Around the bezel and band a series of pierced roundels. This case is a very good fit and was probably custom-made for the watch towards the end of the seventeenth century.
Inscriptions & marks
signature; Eduardus East Londini [potence-plate]
Provenance
Bequeathed by:, Octavius Morgan; Acquired 1888
Historical context
Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
Huygens' pendulum and balance spring transform accuracy; English makers develop the anchor and deadbeat escapements.
The balance spring (c. 1675) improved watches dramatically and introduced the minute hand. English pair-cased verge watches with pierced balance cocks and French oignons were typical; enamel painting at Blois and Geneva, and the repeating watch (1680s), made watches objects of great refinement.
Read the period in the timelineMore pocket watches from this periodEarlier: Renaissance Horology
Atlas type guide
Early spring-driven watches
Portable spring-driven timepieces appeared in southern Germany, France and Italy in the early sixteenth century; Peter Henlein of Nuremberg is traditionally credited, although the historical record is complex. These early watches were worn as pendants or carried, had iron or brass movements with a verge escapement and a foliot or small balance, and used a stackfreed or fusee to equalise spring force. They indicated hours only and were notoriously inaccurate.
From the later sixteenth century watches were made in Blois, Paris, Geneva, London and Augsburg in oval, octagonal, cruciform, skull and other 'form' cases of rock crystal, gilt brass, silver and enamel. They were jewellery and status objects as much as timekeepers.
What to look for
- A single hour hand and often a touch-pin hour ring for feeling the time.
- Stackfreed (a cam and spring) instead of a fusee on German watches.
- Pierced and engraved cocks over the balance, fine gut fusee lines.
- Rock-crystal, enamelled or engraved form cases.
Dating clues
- Drum-shaped German watches: c. 1530–1580.
- Oval and form watches: c. 1580–1650.
- Before c. 1675 there is no balance spring; watches can vary by many minutes a day.
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.
Read next:FoliotThe Melanchthon watch
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