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Jan Janssen Bockelts (Aachen died c.1626)
Engraved with Judith with the Head of Holofernes

Case inside: Abraham Ampe anno 1607
Movement: Jan Janss Bockelts, 1607

case; gilt-brass; engraved, glass dial; gilt-brass; engraved, silver; applied, blued-steel movement; gilt-brass; engraved, steel

case 69.5 mm length case 48.9 mm width case 28 mm thickness movement 54.5 mm length movement 42.5 mm width movement 10.3 mm pillar height

Case: Oval gilt brass with hinged lid and back, the glass in the lid retained by a ring screwed from the inside. Engraved on the back, within a wheat-ear border, a depiction of Judith with the Head of Holofernes and on the inside with the inscription Abraham Ampe anno 1607 in a cartouche. The bombé band also has wheat-ear decoration. The hinge blocks are engraved with masks. Dial: Gilt-brass dial engraved with emblematic figures, birds and scrolls around subsidiary dials for days and months of the year [lower centre], the age and phase of the moon with the letters E (eerst), V (vol), L (laatst), N (nieuw) for the first quarter, full moon, last quarter and new moon, around the outside [upper left]. The date 1-30 is shown in the upper right subsidiary. In the centre an applied silver chapter ring has hours I-XII, star-shaped half-hour marks and an inner circle with alternate hatched and plain marks dividing each hour into eight parts. Gilt-brass and blued-steel hands. Movement: Oval gilt-brass plates with four baluster pillars, a single line engraved around the edge of the back plate and elaborate decoration around the verge aperture. Barrel with snap-in cap and ratchet and click set-up; fusee with gut line and standard stop-work; three wheel going train; verge escapement; steel two arm balance with a pierced foliate balance cock pinned to a stud on the back plate. The manually operated hog's bristle regulator registers against a scale engraved on the back plate. Movement signed: Jan Janss Bockelts Jan Janssen Bockelts the elder, originally from Aachen, working in Haarlem in 1607, thought to have died in 1626. Abraham Ampe, a merchant in Haarlem who was 21 in 1607, is known to have been a close friend of Jan Janssen Bockelts. Literature: Britten, Old Clocks and Watches and Their Makers, 6th Ed., 1932, figs. 160-162. D. Thompson, 'Watches in the Ashmolean Museum', Antiquarian Horology, Vol. 25 (Sept. 2000), pp.507-508. Notes: The glazing of the lid appears to be original and a very early example of it The engraved decoration on the outside accommodates the ring whereas a later modification would have cut through the decoration.

Formerly in the Schloss Collection
sold Christie's, 22 November 1937, lot 84
subsequently in the Maurice Sternberger Collection

Thompson (2007) 6

Bequeathed by J. Francis Mallett, 1947.

WA1947.191.13

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