Pair-case watch with quarter repeating mechanism

Although still officially apprenticed to theLlondon clockmaker Henry Aske (active 1670–94), George Graham (1673–1751) began to work for Thomas Tompion (1639–1713) about 1696. In 1704, he married Tompion’s niece Elizabeth; in 1711, he became Tompion’s partner; and in 1713, he succeeded Tompion at The Dial and Three Crowns at number 67, Fleet Street.[1] In 1721, he became one of the rare clockmakers to be elected a fellow of the Royal Society.[2] Graham’s most notable contributions to the technology of horology were the dead-beat, a recoilless escapement for clocks; the mercury pendulum that compensated for changes in temperature; and, for watches, the cylinder escapement, a recoilless escapement he perfected from the experimental virgule, or “tenterhook” escapement, that Tompion had introduced briefly in 1693.[3] The cylinder escapement replaced the verge escapement in all of Graham’s watches after 1725 or 1726,[4] and it was widely adopted by other watchmakers. In 1755, the French treatise on clock and watchmaking by Jean-André Lepaute (1720–1789) could state that Graham’s was the recoilless escapement most often employed for watches.[5]



The Graham watch in the Museum’s collection has a verge escapement, and the London hallmarked gold outer and inner cases allow certainty in dating the watch to 1719 for the inner case (or box) and a year later for the repoussé-ornamented outer case. Graham continued Tompion’s practice of giving serial numbers to his watches, and like Tompion, he separated ordinary watches from watches with repeating mechanisms, and gave each category its own series of numbers.[6] Thus, the number 467 on the Museum’s watch identifies it as a repeating watch in a series begun by Tompion as early as 1692 and continued throughout both his and Graham’s working life. Historian Jeremy L. Evans has noted that number 562 would have been the last Graham repeater with a verge escapement.[7]



The repeating mechanism was an English invention, but not one of Graham’s. It is a device that allows the user to know the time without looking at the dial. The Museum’s example, a quarter repeater, uses the long stem of the pendant as a plunger to cause the watch to strike the preceding hour followed by the preceding quarter hour on a bell attached to the inside of the inner case of the watch. Repeating watches exist for half-quarter hours, for five-minute periods, and even for minutes, and before the age of instant illumination, these watches were remarkably useful for telling time at night.



For a watch the repeating mechanism is a descendant of a device invented for clocks in 1676 by Edward Barlow (1638–1719). In 1685, Tompion made a repeating watch for Barlow, but when Barlow applied for a patent, he was opposed by Daniel Quare (1647/49–1724), whose own version of the mechanism not only won in a contest of the two devices that was held before the English king in 1687, but also ended Barlow’s hopes for a patent. Horologist David Thompson’s account of the contest appears in his discussion of a watch that may, in fact, be the actual watch entered by Quare in the contest.[8] The Metropolitan Museum’s watch has a further refinement: a “pulse piece” between the five and six o’clock positions. On the side of the outer case it is hardly noticeable, but when pressed, it lifts the hammers so that they do not strike the bell, but instead create vibrations that can be felt, but not heard, whenever discretion is desired.



The movement of the watch consists of two circular gilded-brass held apart by four (?) pillars, and it contains a going train of three wheels ending in a verge escapement with a balance spring and repeating work. The back plate carries an openwork scrolled balance cock with a diamond end-stone in the table, a human mask at the neck, and a solid but engraved foot screwed to the back plate. Next to the balance is a silver figure plate for regulation of the hairspring, as well as the engraved signature, “Geo Graham / London” and the serial number 467.



The dial is laid out in a classic champlevé design, with the roman numerals I–XII in black enamel, the half hours marked by lozenges, and an outer ring of minutes (5–60, by fives), each minute marked by an engraved stroke. The concentric circles of the chapters are polished gold, and the ovals surrounding the numerals are of fine matte gold. The center has two cartouches: the top displays the name of the watchmaker, and the bottom displays the place, London. The beetle and poker hands are blued steel.



The inner case has a band with a cartouche framing a human mask and pierced foliage inhabited by four angry birds. The gold bezel for the glass cover of the inner case is hinged to the case at the nine o’clock position. The outer case is finely embossed and chased with four medallions, which enclose busts of bearded men who punctuate the openwork foliate motifs that allow the sound of the bell of the repeating mechanism to escape. The center, framed by bell flowers, foliage, and heavy baroque scrolls, is left plain, perhaps intended for a monogram if one was desired by the patron. The bezel for the outer case continues the embossed openwork design between two heavy, circular, profile moldings, but here it is divided by baskets of flowers and a shell motif at the hinge.



Both cases are signed with the initials “WS” for William Sherwood Sr. (active 1695–1740) known to have been a preferred casemaker for Graham, as well as Tompion and Quare.[9] Sherwood was one of the forerunners of a group of London goldsmiths who specialized in the embossing and chasing of small gold and silver objects, such as the snuffboxes, cane handles, and watchcases that became increasingly fashionable in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. Narrative scenes were highly desirable in watchcases and in gold box lids, and among the makers of these prized objects who worked in London but came from Continental Europe were Augustin Heckel (died 1770), George Michael Moser (1706–1763), and to a lesser extent the Wieland family.[10]



By about 1742, a member of the Wieland family, Frederick Wieland (active ca. 1731, died after 1759), embossed a scene on the back of the outer case for a pair-case quarter-repeating watch (32.75.37a, b) by Charles Cabrier II (1719–1765) in the Museum’s collection.[11] Identified by historian Richard Edgcumbe as having been adapted from an etching by Sébastian Leclerc (1637–1714), the figure of a flute player and a shepherd with an old man seated in front of a fountain [12] illustrates a story of the Greek sun god Apollo, also regarded as lord of music and song (hence the flute). As shown here, he was serving the legendary mortal Admetus, King of Pherae in Thessaly and husband of the tragic Alcestis, as herdsman of the royal flocks in punishment for having killed the Cyclops. Thus, familiarity with Greek mythology, as well as conspicuous affluence and the discerning ownership of a timepiece signed by a member of a well-respected family of London watchmakers, could be demonstrated by the possession of one watch.



The dial of the Graham watch has been skillfully repaired after having been bent double at some point. The bezel for the glass cover for the inner case is a replacement. The end of the thumb piece of the outer case is missing. It is not known how or when Captain White acquired the watch.



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 Records of Famous Makers,” in Britten 1982, pp. 326–29; J. L. Evans 2004, p. 178.

[2] For a further discussion of the Royal Society, see entry 23 in this volume.

[3] Britten 1982, pp. 148–50; J. L. Evans 2006, p. 38.

[4] J. L. Evans 2004, p. 180; see also J. L. Evans 2006, p. 105.

[5] J.-A. Lepaute 1755, p. 156, and pl. xiii.

[6] J. L. Evans 2006, pp. 38, 102–7.

[7] Ibid., p. 105, no. 567.

[8] Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, inv. no. WA1947.191.85. See Thompson 2007, pp. 46–49, no. 21; see also Jagger 1983, pp. 48–49.

[9] Priestley 2000, pp. 27, 45.

[10] Edgcumbe 2000, pp. 56–66, 86–132, 148–51.

[11] Acc. no. 32.75.37a, b. The outer case is signed “Wiela.”

[12] Edgcumbe 2000, p. 150, and figs. 137a, b.