Swiss Dutch repoussé verge watch with date and chatelaine Circa 1769

Silver pair cased with exceptional decorations
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A large repoussé verge watch with date and chatelaine, made by Abraham Tappy in Goes, the Netherlands, circa 1769. This open faced pair cased watch was crafted from silver and has a rare solid version repoussé outer case, a plain inner case with Hallmarks England 1769 and the maker’s mark “SP”. The exceptionally beautiful “Dutch” white enamel dial has a black date hand and steel time hands. The numbered movement has an early verge escapement in English construction and exceptional decorations.
The movement is signed
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Diameter: 51 mm
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Weight: 114 g
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Signed: Abrm Tappy met privilege tot Veere en Goes                
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Abraham Tappy
Only very few timepieces created by Abraham Tappy (1735-1773) remain. He was a native of the Canton Vaud in Switzerland who spent the last 10 years of his life in the Netherlands. Tappy’s watches display several remarkable technical solutions, one of the most interesting being the winding mechanism with a key that works clockwise as well as anti clockwise. Tappy trained as a watchmaker in London and kept in close contact with England all his life, he had most of his ebauches and some individual components delivered from England. He was acquainted with the bidirectional winding system first used by English maker Thomas Moore, which ensured that the watch would not be damaged if the key was turned the wrong way. Rumour has it though that the mechanism was invented to protect the watches from improper use by owners who were too drunk to tell left from right. At the time the pocket watches were traditionally fitted with verge escapements. Attempts to update this escapement proceeded only slowly and the production of the required parts was difficult and expensive.

The present watch No. 312 was originally designed to use a verge escapement but then he decided to use an early version of the cylinder escapement and modified the movement accordingly. This had the advantage of higher accuracy but came at the price of an increased level of wear. Tappy also employed some new ways of constructing the gearing by attempting to use as many wheels with identical numbers of teeth as possible, this was a way of reducing the production costs. The pocket watches made by Abraham Tappy are important witnesses of technical innovation. Their commercial success, however, was unfortunately very poor.