Mr Watkins would not have been amused

Following up my March 2019 post, I was very surprised to find that the beautiful little Pocket Chronometer by Alexander Watkins made only $8,600 at auction on 2nd June.  Bearing in mind that it featured in the 1851 Great Exhibition and is a 'one-off'' piece of horological history, the £51,000 it sold for fifteen years ago seemed fairly modest, and how it can have achieved such a very much smaller hammer price now is a real mystery to me.  Someone has acquired for themselves a wonderful bargain!

In cataloging the Chronometer Jones & Horan made available some new images, including several of the cases, and courtesy of J&H, here is a selection:

And, surely, the presence of these accoutrements, should have supported a higher resale value?  I'm certain that Alexander, a notably proud man, would have expected so.

Three Follow-ups

I posted about Alexander Watkins and his very fine 1851 Pocket Chronometer in April 2016. As noted in my Clocks Magazine article about Watkins, this watch changed hands in a Sotheby's sale in 2004 for £51,000 - this has always seemed to me a meagre amount for such an attractive and historically-significant timepiece.  So I shall be very interested to see what it makes when it comes up again this summer.  This will be Jones & Horan's sale on Sunday 2nd June - for further details see here. In my experience this is an auction house which really knows its stuff, and their team has in the past been very friendly and helpful to me in my horological researches.

More recently, Isaac Court's 'Patent Time Repeater' featured here.  Rich Newman kindly got in touch from Chicago to let me know about other applications of this fascinating invention - covered in his article:

I've done it again!  Back in November 2015 I was bemoaning missing out on an Alexander Hare pocket watch.  Even more regrettable this time, in the recent sale at Canterbury Auction Galleries.  This was a good example of how much value can be obtained in terms of character and complication if precious metal case material is not so important to a collector:

Courtesy of Canterbury Auction Galleries

To my eye this is a very attractive verge (#386), and not expensive at a hammer price of  £1,900; ah well.

In Print

In response to an e-mail enquiry - thanks for your interest in my work Johann - here's a list of my recent print-published horology articles:

Title	Subject	Publication	Issue Date
Grant of Fleet Street	John Grant and his son	Clocks Magazine	February 2016
Alexander Watkins 1	Watkins and his family	Clocks Magazine	April 2016
Alexander Watkins 2	Watkins and his family	Clocks Magazine	May 2016
Man or Brand?	Ralph and David Gout	Antiquarian Horology	June 2016
John Poole	John Poole	Clocks Magazine	August 2016
Ahead of its Time	George Sanderson	Clocks Magazine	March 2017
Impoverished Innovator	Joseph Berrollas	Antiquarian Horology	June 2017
The Circumvoluting Brand	Sigismund Rentzsch	Clocks Magazine	September 2017
Margetts	George Margetts	Clocks Magazine	December 2017

Small is Beautiful

‘Clocks’ Magazine in its April 2016 issue has published the first part of my article on Alexander Watkins.  Watkins was making fine chronometers in the mid-nineteenth century, trading from a prestigious London address: 67 Strand. 

For students of horology, Watkins is best known for his ‘miniaturised’ chronometer made for the 1851 Great Exhibition.  With its unusually small movement and gold, delicately ornamented case, it is a very fine aesthetic and technical achievement.  However, as I often find, there’s as much interest in a watchmaker’s personal story and the social/commercial setting in which he worked as in his design and manufacturing activities. 

So my article, whilst detailing some of Watkins’s watches and movements and his ideas for simpler watches to combat the influx of Swiss timepieces, also explores the circumstances of an attempted murder and the very marked divide in Victorian society between an affluent family and an ‘ordinary’ one.

 

1851 Great Exhibition gold chronometer

Courtesy of Sotheby’s

 
Watkins left a legacy of innovation and quality of work confirmed by the examples held in the collections of The British Museum and The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.