Lot 436

Johann Georg Thiell, London, Movement No. 548, 50 mm, 96 g, circa 1780
A rare pocket watch with cylinder escapement and so-called "wandering hour"
Case: gilt, chiselled, engraved and chased. Dial: silver and gilding. Movm.: full plate movement, chain/fusee, three-arm steel balance.
The outer area of the clock face is ornamented with applied silver garlands; in the upper half of the dial a semi-circular cut-out displays a rotating, lavishly engraved gilt disc with a window for the Roman hours. The lower half of the dial is decorated with the chased figure of Chronos, god of time; he is shown as a bearded old man holding a scythe and an hourglass. The baroque-style case is equally elaborately embellished with an exquisitely chased and engraved back featuring winged putti, sphinxes, swallows and flower garlands on the back.
Watch- and chronometer maker Johann Georg Thiell (also Thiellen and Thiele) was born in Hamburg in 1714 and lived in Bremen. His chronometer no. 1 resides at the state museum in Stuttgart and was part of an exhibition at the "Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon" in Dresden in 2015. It is the oldest remaining German marine chronometer with an inverted design. In his book "Watchmakers & Clockmakers of the World", G.H. Baillie mentions the watchmaker Thiell in London in 1768 in reference to a watch with a temperature compensation system with brass rods on a steel ground. Johann Georg Thiell died in 1784.

Sold