Silver and tortoise-shell pair-cased verge watch with alarm [dial and outer case not original]

Record summary

Held and catalogued by British Museum (object number 1958,1201.596), this is an alarm watch by Christoph Münhofer, made in Prague, Czech Republic, dated 1670–1680. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Pocket Watches collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: tortoise-shell, silver. Recorded dimensions: Diameter: 39.50 millimetres (dial) Diameter: 46.20 millimetres (inner case) Diameter: 52.10 millimetres (outer case) Thickness: 32.80 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.

Read next:Balance spring (hairspring)Verge escapement