Splendid English silver and tortoiseshell verge Circa 1680

Splendid silver and tortoiseshell pre balance spring verge watch
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A splendid English silver and tortoiseshell pair cased pre balance spring verge watch, circa 1680, gilded full plate movement, verge escapement, decoratively pierced and floral engraved screwed on balance cock and long oval foot, flat balance, worm and wheel set up, fusee and chain, elaborately pierced floriated pillars and foot to the stop work, signed Richard Ditchfield, Londini.
Silver champlevé dial with long Roman numerals against a stippled ground, inner ring with quarter hour divisions, rosette to the center, blued steel tulip hand, gilded outer ring.
Plain silver inner case, split bezel for glass retention, plain ring pendant, indistinct makers mark, tortoiseshell outer case, the back centered with an inlaid silver Tudor rose surrounded by stylized silver wire wreath, decorative small silver roundels to the bezels.
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Diameter: 52 mm
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Signed: Richard Ditchfield Londini
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This watch was made without a balance spring yet was almost certainly completed after its introduction in 1675 but before it was universally adopted in the early 1680s.

Richard Ditchfield (c.1649-1697) was apprenticed through the Clothworkers’ Company and became a Free Brother of the Clockmakers’ Company in 1677. Ditchfield was recorded as an engraver, so it is perhaps no surprise that the movement’s cock and table are wonderfully pierced and engraved and the pillars are of the elaborate floriated form. Indeed, even the signature is executed with an elaborate flourish.