Verge watch in silver pair case by Johannes van Ceulen of the Hague, 1690-1700.

Record summary

Held and catalogued by Science Museum Group, London (object number 1953-47), this is a pocket watch by Van Ceulen, Johannes, made in The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands, The Hague, dated 1690-1700.. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Pocket Watches collection. Recorded dimensions: overall: 17 mm x 57 mm x 65 mm, .135kg. 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

The source record does not include a narrative description. The structured fields above are reproduced from it.

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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