Pocket Watches · Coach watch
Silvered-brass cased hour-striking coach-watch
- Maker / attribution
- Johann Otto Halleicher (Made by)
- Date
- 1650–1670
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- Germany
- Place
- Augsburg
- Object type
- Coach watch
- Materials / technique
- brass, silver
- Dimensions
- Diameter: 107.20 millimetres
- Holding institution
- British Museum
- Accession / object no.
- 1888,1201.230
- Credit line
- British Museum, London
- Catalogue title (original)
- Silvered-brass cased hour-striking coach-watch. (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by British Museum (object number 1888,1201.230), this is a coach watch by Johann Otto Halleicher, made in Augsburg, Germany, dated 1650–1670. 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, silver. Recorded dimensions: Diameter: 107.20 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
Description — British Museum
MOVEMENT Gilt-brass barrel with ratchet and click set-up; fusee with chain and standard stop-work. Three wheel going train. Verge escapement with later brass 3-arm balance and later spiral balance-spring. Pierced and engraved foliate balance-cock. Striking-train for hours only with count-wheel control. : DIAL & HANDS Silver dial; engraved floral decoration, the dial probably not original. Later blued-steel hands. : CASE Silvered brass case, pierced and engraved with foliate scrolls around the band and on the back, the back centred with an angel engraved at right-angles to the pendant. Silvered-brass pendant with loose ring.
Curator's comments — British Museum
Case and dial probably not original.
Inscriptions & marks
signature; J O H A [on the 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
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.
What to look for
- The pierced balance cock on the backplate: winged (continental) or with a foot (English); its style dates the watch.
- Fusee and chain visible through the movement; key winding through the dial (early) or case back.
- Hallmarks inside English silver or gold cases, which give a date letter.
- Maker's name and serial number engraved on the backplate; watch papers inside outer cases.
- Enamel dials (after c. 1720) versus earlier champlevé metal dials.
Dating clues
- Champlevé dials: c. 1680–1730; white enamel dials thereafter.
- English case hallmarks give the year of assay to within a year.
- Verge watches persisted in cheap production until c. 1850.
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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