FRANCIS TORADO | A RARE SILVER VERGE WATCH IN THE FORM OF A ROSEBUD CIRCA 1640
This lot has been withdrawn
Lot Details
Description
FRANCIS TORADO
A RARE SILVER VERGE WATCH IN THE FORM OF A ROSEBUD
CIRCA 1640
• Movement: gilded full plate, verge escapement, decoratively pierced and engraved balance cock, plain flat steel balance, worm and wheel set-up, fusee and gut line, Egyptian pillars, movement signed Francis Torado in Grayes Inn, Fecit
• Dial: silver, chapter ring with Roman numerals, later centre engraved with a foliate design, dial edge engraved with flowers and foliage, blued steel hand
• Case: silver, the back and bezel cast in the form of a rosebud, matted ground, glazed front cover, bud-form pendant, shuttered winding aperture to case back
diameter 32.5mm
Christie's London, 21 March 1972, lot 125
Stanley H. Burton, London
L.A. Mayer Memorial Institute, Jerusalem, inventory no. WA 117-04
Jeremy Evans, The Torado Court Cases: Robbery & Murder, Antiquarian Horology, June 2002, pp. 655-656
Stanley H. Burton, The Watch Collection of Stanley H. Burton 'Warts and All', 1981, pp. 32-33
Francis Torado was admitted as a Free Brother to the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers on 1 April 1633. Torado’s working life would last for some 50 years until his death in 1683. Despite the length of his career, only two watches by this maker are currently known. The first is the present rosebud-form watch, the second is a plain silver watch dating to c.1650; the latter watch was presented to the Clockmakers’ Company by William Plumley in 1816 and later sold by the Company at Sotheby’s London on 10 December 1981, lot 81. A fascinating insight into the life of Francis Torado and his son (also named Francis) can be found in an article by Jeremy Evans, published in Antiquarian Horology, June 2002. In his article, Evans cites a robbery which took place at Torado’s workshop on 27-28 May 1645. Especially remarkable are the quantity of watches stolen during the theft: a total of 75. Seventeen people were named to appear in court and answer charges over the robbery, of whom eight were finally charged with breaking, entering and theft. Three of the eight were found not guilty, of the remainder, two were sentenced to be hung. On 10 August 1663, the Torados were once again the victims of crime when Francis’s son was stabbed in an affray, he died six days later.
A watch by Edward East with a similar silver case cast in the form of a rosebud was sold at Sotheby’s London, Masterworks of Time Part 1, 2 July 2019, lot 14. For two further rosebud cases with movements respectively by William Clay and Edmund Gilpin, see: Cecil Clutton & George Daniels, Clocks and Watches in the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, 1975, pp. 12-13 and Baillie, Watches – Their History, Decoration and Mechanism, 1929, p.126.