English silver and enamel verge watch with mock pendulum Circa 1710

Silver and enamel verge in pair cases by John Bushman
–
An ornamental English silver and enamel pair-cased verge pocket watch with mock pendulum, circa 1710. Full plate movement with the polychrome enamel portrait of a woman, key wind, chain and fusee, a ring balance with mock pendulum. Silver champlevé dial with an eccentric hour chapter ring with inlaid Roman hours, Arabic five-minute numerals, a chased and engraved centre, an aperture for the mock pendulum at 6 o’clock and another one for the regulator at 8. Silver floral engraved outer case with the polychrome enamel portrait of a woman on the back, a large lateral hinge, the polished silver inner case with maker’s mark MF. Dial and movement signed.
–
Diameter 56 mm
–
Weight: 132 g
–
Signed: Bushman London
–
Both polychrome enamel portraits show a lady in a period dress that is very low cut. Although the two ladies are of different ages, the paintings seem to portray one and the same person.
–
John Bushman (also Buschman or Buschmann) was born in 1661 in Augsburg, Germany as the son of the renowned clockmaker Johann Bushmann II. In circa 1687 he moved to London where in 1690, he got married as Johannes Bushman to 23-year-old Mary Wyatt at Christ Church. In 1692 he became a Free 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 Zaccharias Konrad Uffenbach mentions Bushman 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.