Timepieces Collection

Jaecques Bulke (active 1599)
Gilt-brass cased verge clock-watch with alarm

Movement: Jacques Bulcke, c. 1600

case; gilt-brass; pierced and engraved dial; gilt-brass; engraved, steel movement; gilt-brass; pierced and engraved, silver, steel

case 66.1 mm diameter case 31.7 mm thickness movement 53 mm diameter movement 12.5 mm pillar height

Case: Rounded gilt-brass case with hinged lid and integral back, the band pierced and engraved with foliate scrolls. The central area of the lid has been cut out to accommodate a glass (now missing). The back is pierced and engraved with foliate scrolls within a gadroon border. Dial: Gilt-brass dial with a finely engraved foliate border surrounding a raised gilt-brass chapter-ring with hours I-XII, star-shaped half-hour marks and touch-pins around the outside. The central gilt-brass alarm setting disc engraved 1-11 with a steel pointer at 12 to show the time and a central alarm setting hand (the alarm system has been modernised from the earlier type where the alarm was set by adjusting the position of the alarm setting disc against the tail of the hour hand). Movement: Circular gilt-brass plates with four baluster pillars. Finely engraved foliate border around the edge of the back plate and elaborate engraved decoration around the verge aperture. Gilt-brass barrel with ratchet and click set-up; fusee for gut line now altered to chain; three wheel going train; verge escapement; the verge and balance are later replacements; pierced and engraved foliate balance cock pinned to a stud on the back plate. Striking train driven by a fixed gilt-brass barrel pierced and engraved with foliate scrolls and with geared stop work on the back plate; six wheel train, the last a weighted roller pinion; warned release; count wheel control, the silver cover not original. Alarm train of five steel wheels and a gilt-brass contrate wheel driven by a fixed gilt-brass barrel, pierced and engraved with foliate scrolls. There is no stop-work for the alarm train. Verge operated semi-circular hammer. Movement signed: Jacques Bulcke Jacques Bulcke, repairer of clocks for Elizabeth I in 1599. A similar watch case with a movement by Michael Nouwen is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Pierpont Morgan Collection: Williamson Catalogue No. 128).

Hurcombe Sale
Mrs Edgar Leas

Bequeathed by J. Francis Mallett, 1947.

WA1947.191.9

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