Pair-case watch with alarm

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, by which French Protestants were no longer protected from religious persecution, came at the end of nearly a century of tolerance by the Catholic kings of France. A large number of seventeenth-century French clock- and watchmakers were Protestants and traditional centers of clock- and watchmaking, such as Blois and Rouen, had begun to be depleted by the exodus of Calvinist, or Huguenot, clockmakers even before the Revocation. In lesser-known cities, including Châtellerault and Gien, the craft was all but destroyed. Émigré French settled primarily in neighboring areas that were predominately Protestant, foremost among them Geneva, but also England, the Netherlands, and parts of Germany, bringing with them not only their technical skills but also French decorative designs. In England, the influence of the watchmakers on decorative design was reinforced by the contemporaneous influx of Huguenot goldsmiths, a number of whom would have successful careers in London.[1] By the last quarter of the seventeenth century, however, English clock- and watchmakers would develop a strong tradition of their own and became less influenced by the Huguenot watchmakers who had settled nearby. Thus, the watch signed “Massy / London” in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection is probably an example of a collaboration between a Huguenot émigré watchmaker and a casemaker working in London or its environs, and it is unmistakably different from, for example, the watches by the Englishman Thomas Tompion and Nathaniel Delander (see entries 17.190.1489a, b and 17.190.1503a, b in this volume).



The central motif of the silver outer case is a cipher that can be read as either “CB” or “BC” bordered by a scale-patterned frame and a circle of scrolls; the cipher, circle, and scrolls are in relief. The side consists of a second circle, this one made of openwork and consisting of inhabited foliage that alternates with trifid-shaped ornaments. The inhabited-foliage motif is repeated on the sides of the inner case, and a cartouche with a landscape appears at the roman numeral VI position. A small hole in the center of the case permitted the insertion of a screw (now missing) for attaching the bell to the case. The champlevé dial is silver; the hour chapter is marked I–XII with raised lozenges at the half hours; and the dial has a single blued-steel hand. The alarm dial in the center is marked 1–5 and 7–11 in Arabic numerals with a knob attached at the 6 position for setting the alarm. The going train and the alarm are wound through the dial at the roman numeral IIII and IX positions of the hour chapter.



The movement consists of two circular brass plates that are held apart by four Egyptian pillars, and it contains a going train of three wheels with a verge escapement regulated by a balance spring, as well as an alarm train with a decorated barrel and double-armed hammer for striking the bell mounted inside the inner case. Attached to the back plate is a large French-style balance bridge, pierced and chased with foliage that incorporates two squirrels and a bird. A silver figure plate for adjustment of the balance spring completes the attachments.



The enigmatic signature on the back plate of the watch, “Massy / London,” is probably that of Nicolas II Massy (or Massey; 1641–ca. 1728), but previous accounts have erred because there were not two generations of Massys named Nicolas, as formerly thought, but three. Born in Blois, two Massys are recorded as working as watchmakers in London near the end of the seventeenth century. Nicolas II was the son of Nicolas I Massy (ca. 1600–before 1658), who was apprenticed to a clockmaker in Blois in 1611.[2] By 1617, Nicolas I was working in Blois as a companion clockmaker for Pierre II Cuper (born 1604, active in Constantinople in 1634),[3] a member of the large and well-known family of clockmakers established in Blois from the middle of the sixteenth century to the late nineteenth century. Nicolas I was undoubtedly the maker of a pre–balance spring watch (17.190.1572) in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection.[4]



Born in Blois, Nicolas II (or Nicholas II) was in London by 1682 and is recorded in the Clockmakers’ Company’s Court Minute Books as “Nicholas Massy, Watchmaker, a French Protestant . . . admitted as a Brother of the company who paid nothing at present for his admission.” [5] He was naturalized in London in 1685, and he may have died about 1728.[6] The same volume of the Court Minute Books records the admission of “Nicholas Massey the Younger Clockmaker admitted and Sworn a Brother of this Company” in 1693.[7] He was the son of Nicolas II and has in past accounts been confused with his father. It was probably Nicolas the Younger who immigrated to The Hague after 1700 and became a citizen in 1702, and it may have been he, not his father, who died about 1728. There is evidence that he remained in contact with his London-based brother Henry Massy (active 1691–1745) after 1702 and cooperated with supplying London-made gold watches for sale to Continental patrons.[8] This international trade fostered by a family relationship may help to explain the enigmatic character of the signature on the movement of the Metropolitan’s watch, [9 ]but the use of elements like the balance bridge instead of a balance cock, the winding arrangement, and the ornamental design on the going barrel for the alarm train suggest that the maker of this watch had only recently left France, and long before 1702.



The case of the watch has been attributed to a member of a Huguenot émigré family from Marseille who might have been either Adam I (active 1687, died before 1698) or Adam II (recorded 1695/6–died after 1709) Roumeau. Both were members of the London Goldsmiths’ Company and are believed to have used the same maker’s mark: “AR.”[10] There is no maker’s mark on the case of the Museum’s watch, however, nor is there evidence that the Roumeaus supplied watchcases for the Massys.[11] Another naturalized Huguenot, Alexander Leroux (active 1699–1722/3), did, in fact, make cases for Henry Massy.[12] Leroux, like the Roumeaus, was a member of the London Goldsmiths’ Company, and he used a maker’s mark. So the maker of the Metropolitan’s watchcase was probably not Leroux. He may have been someone who worked outside of the City of London, where he could have avoided the rules of the Goldsmiths’ Company for marking his work, as a number of Huguenot craftsmen are known to have done.[13]



The vocabulary of ornament employed by the casemaker is unquestionably of French origin and may have drawn upon the ornamental designs of another émigré from Blois to London, Simon Gribelin (1661–1733), who was admitted to the Clockmakers’ Company in 1687 as an engraver.[14] No surviving watchcase or clockcase has been identified as his autograph work, but beginning with his publication A Book of Severall Ornaments (1682), his designs undoubtedly influenced a generation of craftsmen in London.



The design of the outer case centers around the cipher, a feature prized in Huguenot design as exemplified by Gribelin’s New Book of Cyphers (1704), but prefigured in the Huguenot watchmaker Daniel de La Feuille’s Livre nouveau et utile pour toutes sortes d’artistes (New and Useful Book for All Kinds of Artists, 1690). The trifid motif was favored by Huguenot goldsmiths working in London, including Pierre Platel and David Willaume, while the inhabited foliage on the inner case had a long history in French watchcase making. The variety of foliage appears, for example, on the case of a watch in the Museum’s collection by Nicolas Forfaict, dating from about 1600 or 1610.[15] Although probably recording a style that was fashionable a few years earlier, it could still be found in London in Gribelin’s A Book of Ornaments Usefull to Jewellers, Watch-Makers and All Other Artists (1697). Even later, in Gribelin’s A New Book of Ornaments Useful to All Artists (1704) this same style is used to frame small engraved scenes in a way comparable to that on the inner case of the Metropolitan Museum’s watch. But the influence of Parisian design was also direct. The pierced ornament for the brass balance bridge of the movement of the Museum’s watch and the blued-steel ornaments of the screws that secure the regulator for the balance spring have their counterparts in a series of designs by the French engraver Pierre Bourdon (active 1703–8), which are designated for the use of watchmakers, goldsmiths, chasers, engravers, and others.[16] The better-known Second livre d’orlogeries, published about 1700 by the Paris-born Daniel Marot (1661–1752), also included comparable designs for parts of watches.[17] Like Bourdon’s, these designs are thought to reflect French taste of a few years earlier. The relatively robust ornament of the outer case and the style of the movement probably place the date of the watch sometime in the mid-1690s and certainly not later than the first years of the eighteenth century.



There have been repairs to the inner case where it is joined to the pendant, and the side of the inner case is dented at the XI position. The hand is not original, nor is the bezel for the glass, perhaps made to accommodate a new glass.



The watch belonged to the British banker Frederick George Hilton Price, whose collection supplied many of the seventeenth-century British watches in J. Pierpont Morgan’s collection.



Notes (For key to shortened references see bibliography in Vincent and Leopold, European Clocks and Watches in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015)



[1] See, for example, Hayward 1959.

[2] Fourrier 2000, p. 46.

[3] Ibid., pp. 8, 101.

[4] Acc. no. 17.190.1572.

[5] Clockmakers’ Company, London, Court Minute Books, Ms. 2710/2, 1680–99, p. 13v, entry of Apr. 3, 1682, Guildhall Library, London.

[6] Fourrier 2000, p. 46.

[7] Clockmakers’ Company, Court Minute Books, Ms. 2710/2, p. 141v, entry of July 3, 1693.

[8] Leopold 1989, p. 162; see also Fourrier 2000, p. 46.

[9] For more on this subject, see Leopold 2005a.

[10] Priestley 2000, p. 71.

[11] Ibid., pp. 25–26.

[12] Ibid., pp. 23, 29. One hallmarked for 1710–11 is now in the British Museum, London (inv. no. CAI-0230). See Thompson 2008, pp. 66–67.

[13] Oman 1978, p. 72. See also Vincent 1983, pp. 221–25.

[14] Clockmakers’ Company, Court Minute Books, Ms. 2710/2, p. 65v. For a discussion of Gribelin’s engraving of salvers and seals dating from about 1690 to 1708, see Oman 1978, pp. 72–82.

[15] Acc. no. 17.190.1606.

[16] See Bourdon 1703, pl. 6.

[17] Oeuvre de Daniel Marot n.d., vol. 1, pls. 43, 45–52.