Description: Gilt brass, front wound, verge fusee movement (dial 33.4mm, 4.1mm between plates) with silver regulator dial and copper regulator hand (replacement), quite small ‘small eared’, two-footed cock with steel cockerel. Brass balance and blued steel balance spring. Back plate engraved ‘Romilly A PARIS’ and numbered ‘No. 2108’. Featuring very small round pillars. Enameled copper dial signed ‘Romilly A PARIS’. Lacking hands.
Additional Info:
Jean Romilly (1714 – 1796) was born in Geneva from French parents. He became master in 1752 in Paris and worked at the Quai Pelletier. Between 1772 and 1781 he was located at the Place Dauphine where most of the well reputed French watchmakers worked. He was very inventive and was asked, together with Julien, his son Pierre Le Roy and Ferdinand Berthoud to contribute to the big encyclopaedia of Diderot and d’Alembert. His inventions include: A ‘marine timekeeper’, amelioration of the double virgule escapement of Caron, 8 day watches, one one-year running watch (later improved by Ferdinand Berthoud), watches with equation of time (later improved by Ferdinand Berthoud), watches with ‘seconde morte’ (jumping second), one built in 1754. Latter watch has a cylinder escapement with 30 teeth. Most known watches from Roomily are as the one shown here of simple manufacture and with verge escapement and in decorated gold cases. Romilly justified the production of such ‘simple’ watches in one article in Diderot’s encyclopaedia:
“Watches are instruments for timekeeping, but they’re also used as ornament. I have put watch movements in rings, snuff boxes, bracelets. (…) I have build a repeating watch of only 6.8mm thickness. (…) Workmen building watches like this must have special skills. (…) It is sure that if a watchmaker can built very small movements, he will build even better normal sized movements”.
Antiquarian Horology 
