Description: Gilt brass, full plate fusee movement (47 mm diameter) with square baluster pillars and finely engraved balance cock. Diamond end stone. Signed back plate Tho.(mas) Mudge London 494’. Graham-type cylinder (deadbeat) escapement with original banking, brass escape with 13 teeth. Gilt brass cap signed ‘Tho.(mas) Mudge London’, scratched with movement number ‘494’ as per Graham workshop custom. (A)
Additional Info:
Thomas Mudge, later in partnership with William Dutton, Fleet St, London. Although the firm continued to employ the best London finishers at all times, watches bearing just the name of Mudge alone are rare (A). This movement was produced in the mid 1760’s during the most productive period for Mudge, after receiving recognition for his earlier impressive work for John Ellicott and gaining the King of Spain, from Ellicott, as a customer (A). During the same year this movement was made, Mudge was appointed expert of the Board of Longitude.
The workload he undertook proved to be one that cost Thomas his health and he retired to live with his brother John, an eminent doctor, in 1770/71 (A). It was ‘in retirement’ that he produced his most beautiful, and astonishingly accurate (see Gould), marine chronometer. (A)
William Dutton (1738 – 1794) the son of Matthew Dutton of Marston in Buckinghamshire, was apprenticed to George Graham on 5th January 1738. He received his freedom on 7th July 1746. He was a liveryman of the Clockmakers Company from 1766-94. Most probably Dutton worked for Thomas Mudge from the beginning of the opening of latter’s workshop in 1748, he then entered into a partnership with Thomas Mudge around 1765 taking care of the watch production and took over the whole business in 1771, when Mudge retired due to illness. For some time the firm’s name remained the same until the late 1780s when he started to sign his work as ‘William Dutton’ or ‘W. Dutton’.
For a short period of time he ran the firm together with his two sons: Matthew and Thomas, signing the output ‘W. Dutton & Sons’ (A).
Antiquarian Horology 