German exquisite rare small ship’s chronometer Circa 1840

Ship’s chronometer in a mahogany box by Johann Heinrich Kessels
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An exquisite, rare, small German ship’s chronometer, circa 1840.
The case is a mahogany box with an inlaid brass signature shield, a slide lid and glass, a case key, brass gimbals and bowl, and a two-body. The signed, numbered silvered dial has Roman radial hours, Arabic minutes, extra seconds at 12, and blued Breguet hands. And the polished brass movement, diameter 49 mm, has moulded pillars, chain/fusee, spring detent escapement, bimetallic chronometer balance with four screws and four adjusting nuts, free-sprung blued helical balance spring, and chatoned diamond endstone on balance.
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Diameter: 49 mm
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Dimension box: 125 x 125 x 125 mm
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Signed: Johann Heinrich Kessels, Altona, Hamburg
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Johann Heinrich Kessels, German-Danish clock and chronometer maker.
Kessels was born May 15, 1781, in Maastricht in Holland and died of cholera on July 15, 1849, in Claverham near Bristol. He was one of the most famous, if not the most famous early chronometer makers working in Germany. While Altona was under Danish administration at the time, it was generally considered to be a German city, and literature refers to Kessels as a German maker. After staying in London and Copenhagen, he worked with Abraham Louis Breguet in London and finally settled in Altona, where he opened his workshop. The famous chronometer maker Winnerl of Paris – one of the teachers of Ferdinand Adolf Lange – worked with Kessels in Altona for a while. He quickly gained fame as a chronometer maker for the Danish navy. Kessels created marine chronometers, pocket chronometers and astronomical pendulum clocks.