William Nadauld

The January issue of Clocks magazine has just been published.  It includes my article on William Nadauld, a Huguenot watchmaker, active in London in the early part of the nineteenth century.  Examples of his work are not easy to find, but I have recently come across this better image of the lever pocket watch previously in the collection of Stanley H. Burton:

It is described by the auctioneers, Gardiner Houlgate, thus: 

Unusual silver fusee lever regulator, signed W.E Nadauld, White Hart Court, Lombard Street, no. 10126, full plate movement with sunk balance, the silvered dial with subsidiary hour dial over constant seconds, centre blue steel minute hand with Arabic numeral chapter, later case hallmarked London 1898, 58mm 

This appears to be a distinctive, good quality watch.  Makers like Nadauld were struggling to market such products against competition from imported watches which were considerably less expensive.  As is more fully related in my Clocks article, Nadauld spoke about this in 1817 before a Parliamentary Poor Laws Committee meeting:

What has been the state of your trade of late years? - It has been a considerable falling off these late years. 

What number of watches do you sell annually? - From eight hundred to eleven hundred a year. 

How many have you sold during the last year? - In the last year I do not think I have sold two hundred. 

Quite a severe loss of business! 

For more about Clocks magazine, see here.