English silver and red tortoiseshell pair cased watch Circa 1685

Silver watch with champlevé dial by Thomas Tompion
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An English silver pair cased verge watch decorated with tortoiseshell, circa 1685-1686.
This watch boasts full plate movement with a chain/fusee mechanism, an engraved barrel, a steel balance, a finely engraved and pierced balance cock, and verge escapement. The silver champlevé dial showcases Roman radial hours, an outer minutes track with Arabic numerals for five-minute intervals, and blued steel hands. The inner case is plain silver, while the pierced outer case is covered in red tortoiseshell with inlaid silver decorations. Crafted by renowned watchmaker Thomas Tompion, the watch bears his signature on the dial and movement. Nathanial Delander, the case maker, has left his mark on the inner case with a punched + over N (D), partially effaced.
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Diameter: 57 mm
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Signed: Tompion
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The watch is marked with various numbers and inscriptions, including 712 on the rim of the outer case and 721 on the inside. The movement bears the engraving Tompion London/20 on the backplate, and a punched + over 220 on the pillar plate. The chapter ring inside the watch has the number 20 inscribed, while the dial plate on the movement side bears the number 720. The dial plate on the dial side has (7)20 inscribed, and the underside of the cock has a scratched 720.
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Tompion, who was the first to number his watches, began to do so about 1682. The numbers referred to entries in his business ledgers and allowed him to keep track of the various components of a given watch. Unfortunately, none of his ledgers survives.
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Thomas Tompion was born in 1639, was baptized on July 25^th, 1639 and died in 1713. He was an English clockmaker, watchmaker and mechanic who is still regarded to this day as the ‘Father of English Clockmaking’. His work includes some of the most historic and important clocks and watches in the world. Tompion was born as the son of a blacksmith at Ickwell Green, a hamlet in the parish of Northill, Bedfordshire. It seems that he was trained, with his younger brother James, in the art of blacksmithing. Very little is known of Tompion’s early life, but he was likely involved at some point in the repair of the local church clock as this was usually blacksmith’s work. Perhaps he developed his passion for horology from this. There is no record of Thomas Tompion serving as an apprentice in a clockmaker’s workshop, but on September 4th, 1671, he was admitted to the Clockmakers’ Company, and he became a master in 1704. In 1674 Tompion was introduced to Robert Hooke, the most important English experimental physicist of the 17th century. The following year, 1675, Hooke employed Tompion to make a watch with a special double spring on the balance. On April 7th, Hooke, accompanied by Tompion and Sir Jonas Moore, went to Whitehall Palace and showed the watch to King Charles II. The King was so impressed that he ordered a watch from Tompion for his own use. Tompion employed several apprentices, most notably, Edward Banger, who married Tompion’s niece in 1694 and became free of the Clockmakers’ Company in 1695. He formed a partnership with Tompion in 1701 but some years later a serious quarrel appears to have taken place, and, after about 1708, they ceased to collaborate. The cause of the quarrel is not known but could possibly have been the result of rivalry between Banger and George Graham. The latter had worked as a journeyman in Tompion’s workshop since 1696 and had married another of his nieces. He was taken into partnership by Tompion in 1710 and succeeded the business on Tompion’s death in November 1713. Tompion was buried in Westminster Abbey, indicating the high esteem in which he was held, during his lifetime.