Swiss silver pocket watch with historical enamel scenes Circa 1900
- Kenmerk
- AA0059
- Diameter
- 54 mm
- Estimate
- € 1.250 - 2.500
- Price sold
- -
Silver chased and engraved hunting cased pocket watch
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A fine and attractive manual wind silver pocket watch with Swiss historical enamel scenes, circa 1900.
Silver chased and engraved case, front enamel decorated with William Tell and son, and back with three men of the Swiss Confederation. Frosted gilt movement, straight-line lever escapement, cut bimetallic compensation balance, balance spring, and an index regulator.
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Diameter: 54 mm
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Signed: No name
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William Tell (French: Guillaume Tell) is a folk hero of Switzerland. According to the legend, Tell was an expert marksman with the crossbow who assassinated Albrecht Gessler, a tyrannical reeve of the Austrian dukes of the House of Habsburg positioned in Altdorf, in the canton of Uri. Tell’s defiance and tyrannicide encouraged the population to open rebellion and a pact against the foreign rulers with neighbouring Schwyz and Unterwalden, marking the foundation of the Swiss Confederacy.
Set in the early 14th century (traditional date 1307, during the rule of Albert of Habsburg), the first written records of the legend date to the latter part of the 15th century, when the Swiss Confederacy was gaining military and political influence. Tell is a central figure in Swiss national historiography, along with Arnold von Winkelried, the hero of Sempach (1386). He was important as a symbol during the formative stage of modern Switzerland in the 19th century, known as the period of Restoration and Regeneration, as well as in the wider history of 18th- to 19th-century Europe as a symbol of resistance against the aristocratic rule, especially in the Revolutions of 1848 against the House of Habsburg which still ruled Austria five hundred years later.






















