Rare English silver pair-cased repoussé verge watch Circa 1720
- Kenmerk
- DB0249
- Diameter
- 54 mm
- Estimate
- € 5.500 - 10.000
- Price sold
- € 6.000
Silver verge in pair cased by John Bushman
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A rare English silver pair-cased repoussé verge pocket watch, circa 1720. Gilt full plate movement, chain and fusee, three-arm iron balance, very finely engraved and pierced balance cock, inscribed with the motto of the British Chivalric Order of the Garter Honi soit qui mal y pense (shame on him who thinks evil of it) and the motto of the Monarch of the United Kingdom Dieu et mon droit (God and my right). Silver dial with an engraved scene depicting a windmill, an inner disc with two cutouts displaying the hours, when it moves, it simultaneously indicates the minutes on a semi-circular minute scale, after the full hour at 60 the hour window disappears on the right and the new hour appears on the left, no hands. Repoussé outer case depicting Britannia as seen on coins with the circumscription Aurea florigeris succrescunt poma rosetis (golden apples grow in flowering rose bushes) and the line Securitas Britanniae Restituta (the security of Britain restored), a plain inner case. Dial and movement signed, case numbered.
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Diameter: 54 mm
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Weight: 139 g
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Signed: Bushman London
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John Bushman (also Buschman or Buschmann) was born in 1661 in Augsburg, Germany. In 1690 he got married as Johannes Bushman to 23-year-old Mary Wyatt at Christ Church, London. In 1692 he became a Brother of the Clockmakers’ Company and was made an Assistant in 1720. Bushman presumably worked until 1725. The book “Merkwürdige Reisen durch Niedersachsen Holland und Engelland” (Curious travels through Lower Saxony, Holland and England, first published in 1753) by Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach mentions him as a watchmaker just as good as Daniel Quare or Thomas Tompion: “He is well and truly a humble, polite and goodly man who still speaks good German and never cheats his customers!” He is known to have created several clocks with serpent automatons.
Signed: Bushman London





























