23,000 CHF
Unsigned, Geneva, circa 1780. Very fine and rare 18 ct. vari-coloured gold form watch designed as a lantern with three dials for three time zones. Three-body, top cover with small winding aperture revealed by pulling a lever at the side, top and bottom, covers hinged, decorated with applied vari-coloured leaves and flowers, swivel pendant. Notes Lantern form watches are usually found with three dials for time, day and date; three time zones is very rare, and would appear to be irrelevant in the 18th century. However it should be remembered that clocks were set by the sun, and the time therefore differed from town to town.John Ellicott (1706-1772)One of the most eminent English watch and clockmakers, and the son of John Ellicott, a warden of the Clockmakers' Company. In 1738 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, being recommended for that honour by Sir Hans Sloane, Bart., Martin Folkes, John Senex, the celebrated globe maker, and John Hadley, the astronomer. At the meeting of the Royal Society, he became acquainted with James Ferguson, who afterwards frequently visited Ellicott's private house at St. John's Hackney, where an obsevatory was built, and various scientific experiments were made.Ellicott was the inventor of a compensation pendulum in which the bob rests on the longer ends of two levers, of which the shorter ends are depressed by the superior expansion of a brass bar attached to the pendulum rod. It tended to operate in jerks and was not widely used. Read more…
Auctioneer:
Antiquorum
Date:
2001-03-31
