Early Six Hour Dial London Pocket Watch

An early London verge, with a very rare 6 hour dial.

MOVEMENT : A gilded movement with four large divided Egyptian pillars, a pierced and engraved winged balance cock, with a mask to the neck of the table. Steel balance wheel and silver regulator disk.

The movement is signed Theop. Fisher, London.

All in good condition, and running well.

DIAL : A fine silver 6 hour champleve dial, with six hour divisions marked I to VI (Roman) overlaid with 7 to 12 (Arabic).

Signed Fisher, London

In very good condition and running well.

Nice early blued steel beetle and poker hands, in very good condition.

INNER CASE : No hallmarks, but marked with the maker’s mark TG.

In good condition, with just one small dent on the rim near the 15 minute marker.  The high dome bull’s eye crystal is fine.
The hinge is good and the bezel snaps shut nicely.  The stem has been reattached and reinforced.

OUTER CASE : Silver & tortoiseshell, with silver rims to bezel and back. The back is nicely engraved with a landscape surrounded by a border. This would originally have been inlaid with silver but the metal has worn away leaving the engraved outline (see photo).

The catch and hinge are fine and the bezel snaps shut though the catch button has worn down.  The bezel has a few old areas of repair to the shell and a small round hole near the neck. The back has a few dents, some short cracks from the edge, though no missing shell. Most of the silver pins are still present.

The watch is accompanied by a contemporary steel watch chain, with an early steel key.

Theophilus Fisher is listed in London from about 1700.

The case maker is probably Thomas Goldsmith of St. Margaret’s, Lothbury, London who also provided cases for Thomas Tompion.

This watch displays the time using a most unusual dial layout. The hour hand makes a complete rotation once every 6 hours, rather than the usual 12 hours. The dial indicates the 12 hours for each half of the day by placing the numbers 7-12 (in Arabic numerals) over the top of the numbers 1-6 (in Roman numerals). The minutes are listed from 1-60 around the edge, as a normal dial.

As the timekeeping of watches improved towards the end of the 17th century, watchmakers started to experiment with different dial layouts to allow the user to read the time more accurately. Earlier watches had used just one hand to read minutes by observing the position of the hour hand between the hour divisions. This slightly later version, has a normal minute hand, rotating once every hour.