Clock watch with astronomical dial and sundial

The Dutch Republic, or the Republic of the United Provinces, as it was officially recognized, became an independent state in 1581 when King Philip II of Spain (1527–1598) abjured his right to rule over the Netherlands. Nonetheless, the civil war that had started in 1560 continued after the declaration of independence, and by the early seventeenth century the Dutch Revolt gradually turned into a stalemate. [1] By 1609, a truce was agreed upon, which lasted until 1621. When the Peace of Munster finally ended all hostilities in 1648, the Netherlands was halfway through a period of prosperity now regarded as the Golden Age. Many successful merchants had settled in the new Dutch Republic, and the early voyages of the newly formed Dutch East India Company (1602–1799) brought unprecedented wealth. Amsterdam was rapidly becoming the richest city in Europe. With independence and wealth came a taste for luxury goods and the need for skilled craftsmen, and among these craftsmen were the earliest Dutch watchmakers.



Two of these watchmakers were Jan Janssen Bockelts (or Bockeltz) the Elder (active ca. 1590–1626), who settled in Haarlem before 1607, and Wijbe Wijbrandts (or Vibrandi, a latinized form of the family name), who was a maker of both watches and astronomical instruments. Wijbrandts was born in Sneek, and about 1600 or 1601 he settled in Leeuwarden, the capital of the province of Friesland and another Dutch city made remarkably prosperous by commerce during the seventeenth century.[2] Within forty years, his son Jacob Wijbrandts (active 1635–78) [3] would make a movement for a rock crystal case that would rival those made in France or Switzerland (fig. 20).[4]



It is not certain where Bockelts was born, but it is known that he was an Anabaptist. Anabaptist families are hard to trace because of their reluctance to baptize their children, thus making it difficult to prove family relationships. His birthplace may have been the Flemish city of Ghent, but, as attested by his signature on the back plate of the Metropolitan Museum’s watch, he had spent some time in Aachen, Germany. The signature could be understood as “Bockelts from Aachen,” rather than “Bockelts in Aachen,” as has sometimes been proposed.[5] It seems probable that he was not born in Aachen, however, and was more likely to have been among the large number of Protestants, many of them Anabaptists, who took refuge in Aachen during the conflict with King Philip II in the 1580s. Many of these émigrés were known to be skilled craftsmen.[6] In 1598, a Spanish-backed coup restored a Catholic regime in Aachen,[7] and the increasing prosperity of the Dutch Republic resulted in the return of many of the Dutch and Flemish émigrés.



It is not known where Bockelts acquired his considerable skills in watchmaking, but certain technical practices evident in his watches would suggest that he was trained in Germany.[8] By 1607, however, he was in Haarlem, near the North Sea coast. A watch signed “Jan Janss Bockelts” and inscribed with its owner’s name and the date, “Abraham Ampe anno 1607,” is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.[9] As David Thompson has pointed out, Ampe is known to have been a merchant in Haarlem and a friend of the watchmaker’s family.[10] A third watch, or clock watch (a watch that strikes the hours), signed “Jan Janssen Bockeltz/Fes” is in the collection of the British Museum, London,[11] and constitutes, along with the Metropolitan Museum’s clock watch, the surviving unquestioned evidence of Bockelts’s production of watches.[12] An inventory found in the city records of Haarlem and drawn up in 1626 for the estate of the clockmaker refers to him as Jan Janssen the Elder. Two sons—Jan Janssen the Younger (active 1625–35), whose work has sometimes been confused with that of his father,[13] and Matthijs—were also watchmakers.



The movement of the Metropolitan’s watch is hinged to an oval case and cover at the twelve o’clock position. It consists of two gilded-brass plates, which are held apart by four elongated, vase-shaped pillars that are pinned to the front plate. The movement also contains a going train of three wheels that end in a verge escapement, now with a steel balance wheel, balance spring, and regulator. The mainspring is encased in a brass barrel with flanges at top and at bottom. The fusee, which was originally cut to accommodate a gut line, has twelve turns that provide a duration of two days before rewinding becomes necessary.



The striking train has five wheels and a fly, which strikes the hours on a bell that is screwed to the interior of the back case. It is driven by an iron spring encased in a gilded and engraved, openwork brass barrel and is regulated by a steel count wheel with interior-cut teeth mounted on the exterior of the back plate. Also mounted on the back plate is a lever that permits the silencing of the striking mechanism. The alarm train has three steel wheels, and it is powered by an open spring. The back plate supports a ratchet and an ornamented click, which are held in place by an S-shaped, blued-steel spring for regulating the setup of the mainspring (top left) and, continuing in counterclockwise order, the engraved scale for a hog’s-bristle regulator of the balance (now superseded); an openwork scrolled cock for the balance pinned to the back plate; a figure plate for regulating the present balance spring; the count wheel for the striking train, protected by an openwork bridge; and the strike/silent lever. The watchmaker’s name, “Ian•Ianssen• Bockeltz/ Van Aec ken,” is engraved in the center of the upper half of the back plate. (The winding square for the spring to the alarm projects through the back plate and interrupts the lettering of the place name in the signature, and traces of its cross-shaped ornament are still visible on the end.)



The front plate of the movement is attached with steel latches to the dial plate by three feet. The dial plate carries a silver chapter of hours (I–XII), with stars marking the half hours and touch pins. The central disk for setting the alarm is a replacement that may date to as late as the nineteenth century. There are subsidiary dials for demonstrating the phase of the moon (upper left), the day of the month (upper right), and the month with the number of days in the month (below the center.)



The remaining areas of the dial plate are filled by engraved figures that personify the Four Seasons. Starting from the top left and proceeding counterclockwise, these are a seated nude female figure with a bouquet of flowers in her upraised hand, labeled “lenten” [spring]; a seated female figure with a cornucopia in one hand and a sickle in the other, labeled “somer” [summer]; a bearded old man warming his hands at an open fire, labeled “winter”; and a youth seated on a barrel, holding a wine cup and pouring out the contents of a jug, labeled “herbst” [autumn]. All Four Seasons are adapted from engravings by Crispijn Van de Passe the Elder (1564–1637) from designs by the Flemish artist Maarten de Vos the Elder (1532–1603), who supplied numerous images for both narrative purposes and personifications. [14] The engravings are not dated and are identified in Latin. As the labels on the watch dial could be in either Dutch or German, they are not particularly helpful in determining whether the watch was made in Germany or in the Dutch Republic.



The back of the oval case is made of pierced and gilded brass and chased on the exterior surface with leafy foliage inhabited by a seated youth under a canopy, who is playing a pipe and holding another pipe. He is flanked by two birds with wings spread. A squirrel hoarding a nut and a monkey reaching for fruit are depicted on either side of a central landscape with a stork and below, a Roman soldier, with a shield and spear, is seated beneath an arch and flanked by a horse and a unicorn, both prancing. All of these figures display an engaging spiritedness. The same qualities hold true for animals on the band or side of the case: a hound chasing a stag on one long side, and a hound chasing a hare on the other.



The exterior of the case cover is a shadow of its original appearance, owing, no doubt, to wear resulting from prolonged use of the watch. A remarkably ambitious scene based on the biblical story of the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham (the angel staying Abraham’s hand), still remains. To the scene in the foreground Bockelts added two men beside a donkey that is helping itself to a tuft of grass. As the donkey is saddled and one of the men is seated, they are apparently resting during a journey. Flying in on the right side of the sky, above a walled city, a winged putto holds a scroll proclaiming the identity of the engraver as well as the provider of the design: “ian• iansen• bockels• inve/et scvlp.” Both the case and the cover are framed by neatly engraved borders of ears of wheat, and on the cover a small grotesque mask appears at the hinge. These elements also exist on the other two known watches with movements signed by Bockelts, suggesting that he probably made those cases as well.



A portable horizontal sundial with a folding-style compass that is usable at 42-degree latitude is screwed to the interior of the cover. The openwork scrolling on the style repeats that of the click, the cock for the balance, and the bridge for the count wheel on the back plate of the watch. The sundial would have been a useful addition for setting and correcting the watch, which in spite of its multiple functions, could not have been a very good timekeeper until the application of the balance spring.



While it is unwise to draw many conclusions from comparisons with the engraved cases of the other two Bockelts watches, it does seem possible that the Metropolitan Museum’s watchcase is not too distant in date and place of origin from the Ashmolean Museum’s. The Metropolitan’s clock watch is not only one of the earliest known Dutch watches still in existence but also a rare example of a watchcase and watch movement that can be reliably assigned to the same maker.



Due to the extensive amount of wear on the exterior of the case, it is probable that the watch was in use throughout most of the seventeenth century, and at some point after 1675, it was thought worth adding a balance spring. The motion work for the moon dial has been largely repaired, and the gearing for the month is missing entirely. The original hog’s-bristle regulation for the balance has been removed, and the installation of the balance spring probably accounts for the replacement of the original verge and balance. In addition, the table of the balance cock has been awkwardly strengthened. A chain for the fusee has replaced the gut line. The fly (a roller pinion) in the striking train is a replacement, and the bell is cracked. The disk for setting the alarm is a replacement, and neither of the hands are original to the watch. On the side of the clasp, there is a repair to the border at the bottom of the dial plate, and on the other side, the repair is now missing. The bezel for the compass on the sundial has deteriorated.



J. Pierpont Morgan purchased the watch from the British banker Frederick George Hilton Price,[15] and it appears in the Morgan collection in 1911, when it was illustrated in a publication by F. J. Britten.[16]



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] The authors would like to thank Professor Johan Koppenol of Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, for his assistance in summarizing the events of this complicated

period in Dutch history.

[2] See Ottema 1923, pp. 10–11, and figs. 2–4; Morpurgo 1970, p. 144. His watches, usually dated about 1600 to 1610, are in the Stichting Museum en Archief van Tijdmeetkunde, Schoonhoven (Beringen 2012, p. 28, no. 1; Peeters 2012, pp. 20–21); the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Spierdijk 1973, p. 207, no. 36, and fig. 36; Peeters 2012, pp. 16–19); and the Museum Willet-Holthuysen, Amsterdam (Hoe laat was het? 1956, no. 4a).

[3] Ottema 1923, p. 11, and figs. 5, 6.

[4] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no. 17.190.1019). See also entry for 17.190.1579 in this volume.

[5] See Williamson 1912, p. 91.

[6] Israel 1995, p. 348.

[7] Ibid., p. 366.

[8] See Thompson 2008, p. 22.

[9] Inv. no. WA1947.191.13. See Thompson 2007, pp. 14–15, no. 6.

[10] Ibid., p. 14.

[11] Inv. no. 1888,1201.170. See Thompson 2008,

pp. 22–23.

[12] A fourth watch in the British Museum (inv. no. CAI-2225), signed with the monogram “14B,” has been attributed to the elder Bockelts. See Tait 1987, pp. 58–59, no. 41, and pl. 22, f, and pl. 23, a, b.

[13] For an account of the scandal that caused Jan Janssen the Younger to move from Haarlem to The Hague, see Leopold 1989, p. 156; Peeters 2012, p. 303.

[14] See Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish, 1949–2010, vol. 44 (1996), pp. 282–83, nos. 1420–23, and vol. 46 (1995), pt. 2, pp. 210–11, pls. 1420–23.

[15] Williamson 1912, p. 90.

[16] Britten 1911, pp. 143–44, and p. 141, fig. 145, and p. 142, fig. 146.