Important Wristwatches, Watches & Clocks

Geneva, Hotel Des Bergues, Oct 17, 1992

LOT 215

Fromanteel & Clarke, London, circa 1695. Fine and very rare silver pair-cased Sun-and-Moon watch with calendar and subsidiary seconds.

CHF 11,000 - 14,000

Sold: CHF 19,550

C. Outer. Two-body, entirely chased and engraved with a complex foliage pattern inhabited with mythological birds and masks, landscape vignettes (slightly rubbed). Square hinge. Inner. Two-body, plain, polished, loosering pendant. D. Silver champleve, Roman hour and Arabic five minute numerals, blued-steel disc inlaid with gold sun and blued-steel moon and stars. Aperture for the gilt-metal calendar ring at 12 o'clock, subsidiary seconds at 6 o'clock. Blued-steel poker pattern hands. M. GiIt-brass full-plate with pierced tulip pillars, fusee with chain, verge escapement with plain three-arm steel balance, flat balance spring with rack-and-pinion regulator. Large pierced and florally engraved 'eared' balance cock, with pierced foot. Signed on the dial and movement. In very good condition. Diam. 59 mm.


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Notes

The Fromanteel of Fromanteel & Clarke is probably Abraham (apprenticed 1662, Clockmaker's Company 1680-1711), as a similar watch, also with sun-andmoon and seconds is in the Mallett Collection, Oxford, and is illustrated and described by G. H. BaillIe in his standard work-Watches, p. 326, pl. XLV. According to Baillie it was the earliest watch known with a subsidiary seconds hand in what is now considered as the conventional position i. e. 6 o'clock. The watch now offered for sale is mechanically similar in every respect, as both have a calendar as well seconds, but in view of the partnership name may date from a few years Iater