Centuries of Time: A Private Collection

Centuries of Time: A Private Collection

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 1359. A rare gold and enamel jump hour half-hunting-style cylinder watch made for the Ottoman market Circa 1830, no. 4514.

Swiss

A rare gold and enamel jump hour half-hunting-style cylinder watch made for the Ottoman market Circa 1830, no. 4514

Auction Closed

May 14, 02:23 PM GMT

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 CHF

Lot Details

Description

Swiss


A rare gold and enamel jump hour half-hunting-style cylinder watch made for the Ottoman market 

Circa 1830, no. 4514


• Movement: unsigned frosted gilded, cylinder escapement, flat three-arm balance, blued steel regulation arm, standing barrel, gold cuvette decorated with light blue champlevé enamel and translucent pale peach enamel over engine-turning, enamel repairs to edge, apertures for winding and hand-setting

• Dial: white enamel, aperture beneath pendant for jump hours with Turkish numerals, eccentric minute ring, gold minute hand with crescent-form tail, subsidiary seconds with Turkish numerals and blued steel hand

• Case: gold and enamel the front cover decorated with scrolling foliage and flowers heightened in light blue and white champlevé enamel, apertures for hours and seconds, each surrounded by quatrefoils polychrome enamel painted with flowers against a translucent peach enamel ground, case back centred by polychrome enamel seascape with ships in sail, mountains in the background and a graduated translucent enamel sky over sunburst engine-turning, scalloped border of white champlevé enamel, the bezel, pendant and bow decorated en suite with case front, pusher through pendant to release hinged front cover, cover and cuvette numbered 4514, case with some repairs


diameter 48mm

R. Chadwick, A Voyage Through Time, London: Unicorn, 2020, pp. 180-181.
C. Jeanenne Belle, Collectors Encylopedia of Pendant and Pocket Watches, 1500-1950, p. 343.
Jump hour watches appear to have been fashionable for a brief period around the 1830s. The majority of extant examples are either open-faced or hunting cased with very few revealing time through apertures for their front cover in a half-hunting watch style. This watch is particularly unusual since it has two small circular apertures to the front which reveal the hours and seconds only. The minutes can only be viewed by opening the front cover which, in so doing, reveals a white enamel dial of standard size but with off-set minute ring. Interestingly, a similar Ottoman market watch, numbered 4515, sequentially that following the present watch, was sold at Christie's Geneva, 13 November 2006, lot 274. Although the latter watch incorporated different decorative motifs and colouration, it had an identical arrangement of quatrefoils around the apertures of the case as well as a scalloped frame to the case back's scene (which showed musical trophies).