Swiss Watch, ca. 1860
Watch
GUEST:
I found it in my father's stuff when he died, and I believe that it was my grandmother's, but it might have even been her mother's-- I'm not sure.
APPRAISER:
Well, it probably was your grandmother's mother's. This is a Swiss watch, and the reason I think it's interesting is because it's a Swiss watch from before the days people thought of Swiss watches as being precision. And long before the Swiss made watches, they were famous as jewelers. And Geneva, where this watch was made, had a very unusual location that allowed it to be a trading center as far back as the 17th century. And what makes this watch particularly interesting and why we wanted to show it today is the beautiful enamel work and the diamonds that are set on the back of the watch. The Swiss were very, very good enamelers and makers of fine gold jewelry. The thing we can't show on TV is the fact that when you pick this up, it's a fairly heavy, 18-karat-gold case. Now, by the middle of the 17th century, the Swiss were making watches for everybody in the world. They were set up in Constantinople, they had agents in the 18th century in the United States. And like many things which are very technical and that people don't really understand, it's the packaging that makes a watch attractive to people. And what you see here is a typical mid-19th-century decorative watch, and it has all the decorative detail that you would expect to see on a piece of Victorian jewelry. It has very nice scrollwork on it, it has a bouquet of flowers. The diamonds on it are rose-cut diamonds, which you see on a lot of Victorian jewelry. They were trying to imitate the work of the 18th century. If we were to open the watch up, you'd see the maker's signature on it, you'd see the watch winds with a key. And in fact, if you were to open it up further, you would see that the watch still is ticking and that the watchmaker's name is on the inside on the movement. All of these things say it was a very good watch, and a watch that today, if I were selling it, I would ask somewhere between $3,500 and $4,500 for it.
GUEST:
Wow. (laughs) Wow, that's great. I had no idea.
Appraisal Details
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