English polychrome enamel painted watch Circa 1620-1625

Polychrome enamel painted watch by David Ramsay
–
An English, partly silver gilt, copper watch with painted enamel scenes, indications for months with signs of the Zodiac, days with the ruling planet, lunar date, moon phase and planet hour, circa 1620-1625.
Gilt brass oval full plate movement, verge escapement, three wheel train, engraved border, plain flat balance, ratchet set up, fusee and gut line.
Engraved dial plate, applied chapter ring with Roman numerals, pierced rotating central disc with indicating the time, chapter ring with days of the month indicated by a steel hand mounted on a revolving gilt metal centre pierced and engraved with the months and the corresponding signs of the Zodiac, to the left: wedge shaped aperture for the day of the week with an engraving of the ruling planet, apertures for the lunar date above moon phases, further small aperture for planet hour to lower right, the days of the week and planet hours with fixed blued steel hands indicating the direction of disc rotation, further fixed hand by lunar date aperture.
The exterior of the front is covered with enamel plaque depicting Apollo, the Raven and Coronis and the inside is enamelled with two subjects from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Movement by David Ramsay. Enamelled by ir (probably Jean II Reymond, Limoges).
–
Dimensions: 48 x 34 mm
–
Signed: David Ramsay fecit
–
In the first quarter of the seventeenth century, a small group of enamelers in Limoges produced polychrome painted enamels for watchcases. Most of the surviving enamels, including the one displayed here, were adapted from the woodcut illustrations by Bernard Salomon (1505/1510–ca. 1561) for the editions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses published in Lyon by Jean de Tournes beginning in 1555. The watch case was cleverly modified, probably in the second half of the nineteenth century, to fit a movement of equal rarity.
–
David Ramsay, one of the finest early makers, made this magnificent watch and the first Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers at its formation in 1632. Born in Scotland c. 1585, he went to work in France, arriving in England in about 1610, at the request of King James I. Ramsay was appointed chief clockmaker to James I in 1613, he went to work in France, arriving in England in about 1610
(Tothill Street, Westminster, later in Holborn within ‘two doors of the Wounded Hart’).
When he was granted a pension in 1618 received the grant of the office of Chief Clockmaker to the King, and in 1619 received a grant of denization because he was born in Scotland.
The first master of CC in 1632, by whom he was known as Squire Ramsay, but scarcely ever attended except between 1652 and 1654, when he suffered under Commonwealth and voted
himself grants from CC funds – d.1660. Sometimes signed T David Ramsay Scotus.’