Description: Gilt brass, cylinder (brass), capped full plate fusee movement (38mm diameter), engraved cock and slide plate. Cylinder escapement retaining original Graham-type banking, 13-tooth brass escape. Steel balance, spiral balance-spring. Original enamel dial, signed WESTON (the manufacturer of the dial) on the counter enamel, brass edge with underside scratched ‘Earnshaw Finisher’. (A)
Additional Info:
This might be the earliest movement attributed to and ‘finished’ by Thomas Earnshaw at the beginning of his watchmaker career (he ended his apprenticeship 1770), when he was working as ‘finisher’. A finisher is an accomplished watchmaker who had to perform specific tasks during the manufacture of a watch movement: turn in the train, finish off the barrel, turn and pivot the train wheels, cut the undercuts in the pinion heads and face (polish) them, and leave the movement ready for the escapement maker (B).
Normally it is impossible to know who made what during watch manufacture, very little workshops kept track of this info, one of the most detailed records surviving are those of Abraham – Louis Breguet’s atelier. Normally scratched messages on watch movements concern repair logs and not manufacture.
A historically very important message was found on the first of Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watches (Liverpool movement, american made gold case, now Smithsonian, National Museum of American History, Washington DC), left there by a watchmaker entitled to repair this watch in 1861 (start of the civil war). It was found only recently, in 2009 following the request of one of the watchmakers family members to remove the dial. The inscription reads:
Jonathan Dillon, April 13-1861, Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date J Dillon, April 13-1861 Washington, Thank God we have a government, Jonth Dillon.
A later inscription from a watchmaker in 1864 is also present, countersigning a further repair. Abraham Lincoln never new there were these inscriptions.
Peter Torckler (also Torkler) is a little documented figure of 18th century London. He appears to most probably have been an émigré craftsman who established a business in London, most presumably to take advantage of the London based export trade to the East which was unrivalled in other parts of Europe. He would have undoubtedly employed the skilled talent available in London of specialists in the production of the myriad of components required to produce elaborate automata and who would also have supplied the other producers of such items. Torckler is listed in the London trade directories for 1780 – 83 as working from 9, Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell, right in the centre of the clock and watch-making district and just three doors from the renowned maker James Upjohn who supplied the elephant chariot clock in the Beijing Palace Museum. Another of Torckler’s automaton clocks, though not of animalistic in form, but incorporating twisted glass rods to simulate waterfall is retained in The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg indicating that the current clock was not a sole foray into this market (see. R. Smith, ‘The Sing-Song Trade’, op.cit., figs 12a-b).
It is thought that the maker of this clock is the same Peter Adolph Torckler who was born in Riga and who arrived with an Edward Torckler (presumably his brother) in Calcutta in 1795. Torckler is recorded as having established himself as a partner in the mercantile firm of Howell and Torckler in Calcutta dealing in goods imported from China perhaps indicating that he had already established some trading links in the Far East. Torckler died in Calcutta in 1824 aged seventy-six and as such could well have been working in London in the 1780s.
That Torckler was working in London during the latter years of the eighteenth century can be further supported by a faint inscription to the reverse of enamelled dials which read ‘Weston’. This mark is almost certainly for William Weston whose workshop was based in Greenhill’s Rents, West Smithfield from 1764.
2013 an automaton surmounted by an articulated Asian elephant signed Peter Torckler has been sold at Sotheby’s for 1.4 Million £.
Pictures credit: Yves Müller – http://www.visiuns.com
Antiquarian Horology 