39,100 CHF
"Pre-Balance Spring" Thomas Chamberlaine de Chelmesforde. Made in England, circa 1660. Very fine and rare Charles II silver pre-balance spring, single-hand watch with date indication. Two-body, “bassine”, with curved band, polished, with a shutter for the winding aperture, split bezel, small swivel pendant, loose ring. Silver chapter ring with Roman numerals, half-hour markers and inner quarter-hour track, inner pierced and engraved composition of spring flowers over a black ground, outer 31-day calendar ring with a pointer mounted on a gilded ring between the chapter and the calendar rings. Blued steel single "tulip" hand and pointer. 41 mm, hinged, gilded full plate, early-type divided Egyptian pillars, fusee and gut-line, verge escapement, two-arm steel balance without a spring, silver florally pierced and engraved cock secured by a screw, three-wheel train, worm and wheel set-up with pierced blued steel brackets, silver plate and Arabic numerals from 1 to 8. Signed on the back plate. Diam. 50 mm. Notes Thomas Chamberlaine He worked in Chelmsford (Essex) and London between 1642 and about 1663. He was not officially a member of the Clockmaker's Company but was known to them and tolerated by them. His work is quite sophisticated and he was working at a time of political turmoil in England. This watch is of exactly mid-17th Century manufacture and is likely to have been made just after the restoration of Charles II rather than late in the reign of Charles I or duri
Auctioneer:
Antiquorum
Date:
2005-10-16
