WATCH LORGNETTES NOTE Neil Handley*

NOTE
WATCH LORGNETTES
Neil Handley*
Serious collectors will, not uncommonly,
encounter hybrid objects featuring the
combination of an intricate working device with
another implement. In the field of ophthalmic
antiques, vision aids have been found on the
ends of walking sticks, in the middle of fans
and embedded within scent bottles. Only a few
fortunate collectors, however, have acquired
a watch lorgnette in which a hand-held pair
of spectacles is combined with a watch in the
handle which in turn doubles as the protective
case for the optical lenses. We are fortunate in the
British Optical Association Museum for having
collected no fewer than three such devices.
Paul Buck, Assistant Curator of Horology
at the British Museum, has kindly inspected
the watch movements. He found them to
be standard bar movements with cylinder
escapements, but his input has helped to refine
the dating of the objects.
This note is intended both to describe these
three lorgnettes and to appeal to the horological
community for any additional information as to
their history, use and occurrence.
LDBOA1999.899
This object (Figs 1-3) was purchased in
November 1934 from one E. Good, about
whom nothing more is known by the museum.
It is a folding lorgnette with a spring lever in
the handle and a suspension ring for hanging
about the person on the end of a cord or ribbon.
The rims and lenses are rectangular with a
hinged ‘X’ bridge. The handle-cum-case is of
18ct gold decorated with tooled leaf and scroll
patterns. The item is marked with the name of
Baudin Freres, Geneva, presumably the retailer
and about whom more information would be
gladly received. We know only that they are
watchmakers recorded from 1800. The lid that
encloses the watch movement is enamelled and
painted with a classical love scene in a sylvan
setting. Accompanying the object is a gold chain
bar (the chain itself is missing) and regulator key
in matching design.
Fig. 1. Watch lorgnette LDBOA1999.899. Watch lorgnettes combine two functional devices in the form of a vision aid
and a timepiece, but the primary purpose of the resulting luxury item is decorative.
*Neil Handley, MA, AMA, is Curator of the British Optical Association Museum, London. http://www.college-optometrists.
org/museum. He shall be grateful to receive feedback on this note at his museum, 42 Craven Street, London WC2N 5NG,
tel. 020 7766 4353 or 020 7839 6000, email: [email protected]
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december 2011
Fig. 2. The visually impaired would miss seeing the beauty
of the enamelled lid to the watch compartment. A damaged
area to the left side of the enamelling was restored by
Richard Higgins in 2009.
Fig. 3. The inscription reads ‘ECHAPPEMENT / A CYLINDRE
/ QUATRE TROUS RUBIS // Baudin Frères Geneve’. This
retailer, in the Grand Quai, rue Mallet is known to have
signed watches up to about 1860, raising the possibility
that we have dated the item too early.
When mentioned in the British Optical
Association’s in-house journal, the Dioptric
Review, in April 1935 this object was wrongly
claimed as French, but it also stated that this
recent acquisition was then over a hundred years
old. That means the object be dated to circa the
1830s, but perhaps not too much before since
the tooling is all of the same depth which is
often a clue as to a later date. A real tortoiseshell
case (object number LDBOA1999.1996) of the
correct size and stylistic date was acquired at the
same time. The date of 1999 in the accession
register reflects the date of the major inventory
project begun by myself at the museum in the
1990s, the fruits of which labour are making
possible feature articles such as this.
Fig. 4. Watch lorgnette LDBOA.1999.900. The key and chain shown below it were acquired with this item but is however
not original to it. There are over 180 lorgnettes in the collection of the British Optical Association Museum at the College
of Optometrists in London. Most were purchased in a very narrow period of time between 1929 and the outbreak of
the Second World War.
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Fig. 6. It is a dilemma deciding whether to display the lid
to the watch compartment closed or open.
(1844-1923) once owned a very similar object.
The tooling has a two-tone effect achieved by
using a wide angled tool head in both directions.
It was formerly accompanied in the museum store
room by the gold key in matching design attached
by a gold chain, but as this key does not in fact fit
the device it has been teamed up retrospectively
with object LDBOA1999.1946 instead.
Fig. 5. This watch plate is unsigned, but bears the same
inscription in capitals as quoted in caption 3, as well as the
number 2897, the word Aiguilles to denote where to adjust
the hands, and the letters A and R where the regulator key
was to be used to make the watch run faster or slower.
LDBOA1999.900
This object (Figs 4-8) is also assumed to be Swiss
and of slightly later date, maybe circa 1840-1845.
Purchased directly from E. Good by the museum
founder, John Hamer Sutcliffe (1867-1941)
for £19 in October 1934, it is another folding
lorgnette with a spring lever in the handle and
suspension ring. Again the lenses are rectangular,
the folding bridge is ‘X’-shaped and the 18ct
gold case is decorated with tooled leaf and flower
patterns. The watch movement escapement has a
polished steel internal cover to the bedplate and
a generic (unsigned) dial. The sprung cobalt blue
enamel case lid is decorated with a rose spray
pattern featuring a central old mine-cut diamond
surrounded by smaller rose cut diamonds joined
by liquid copper trails. The spring release clip
is at the end of the handle by the suspension
loop. According to an illustration in the Parisian
optician Pierre Marly’s book Spectacles and
Spyglasses (1988), the actress Sarah Bernhardt
Fig. 7. Opening the watch revealed the movement for the
first time since the object entered the optical museum.
Fig. 8. Analysis of the watch movement suggests that
none of these items is likely, in fact, to date from before
the 1840s.
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Fig. 9. Watch lorgnette LDBOA1999.1946. Despite being from a different workshop the museum’s third watch lorgnette
closely resembles the others . . . until turned over.
Fig. 10. Representing an early nineteenth-century guitar, this watch lorgnette seemingly harks back to an earlier era than
its mechanism would confirm.
LDBOA1999.1946
This object (Figs 9-12) seemed to us, at first, to
be the earliest of the three items, dating from
circa 1810-1820 though it was purchased last,
in February 1938, and was arguably the best
bargain, being bought from the Executors of one
Ms Falcke for the princely sum of £11. Like the
aforementioned item its body is in the shape of
a guitar, but the resemblance is carried further
with the decorative form also representing a
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musical instrument, complete with thin wire
strings. The maker is somebody called Leresche
working within the famous Golay workshop. The
Bate Collection of Historic Musical Instruments
at University of Oxford has confirmed that this
does represent a guitar; the angled pegboard with
rear pegs is typical of the ‘transitional’ period in
the development of that particular instrument.
Similar in material and optical form to the
previous two instruments this lorgnette features
a blue enamel lid on one side of the case studded
Fig. 11. The intricacy of the workings remind us of the close affinity between jewellers and opticians. The
Jura region of France, close to the Geneva border, remains a renowned centre of spectacle making.
differing prescription uses, ranging from -0.25
to -4.50 dioptres, being suitable therefore for
either close inspection or distance vision and at
least raising the possibility that the devices were
primarily for show although it is also possible
that we have two that were originally unsold
and are glazed with demonstration lenses only.
The one thing for which they could not be used,
however, was to read the time on the watch.
Perhaps the canny supplier would have tried to
sell the customer two pairs!
There do not seem to be many of this type of
lorgnette in existence. I have seen one on display
in Switzerland at the Haus zum Kirschgarten,
part of the Historisches Museum in Basel and
it has been brought to my attention that six
such items are on display in the Patek Philippe
Museum in Geneva, which I have not yet been
able to examine. There is an example in gold
from circa 1830 in the Smithsonian’s National
Museum of American History, Behring Center,
the enamelled lid bearing the image of a winged
cherub. There are further lone examples in
private collections of ophthalmic antiques
known to the author.
All considered, this type of object seems to
be rare, and it would be interesting to learn if
the horological community views them in the
same regard.
Fig. 12. Sight unseen: A rare view of an object normally
displayed in an altogether different context.
with rose cut diamonds. This lifts to reveal the
watch with its stamped signature on the bed
plate. Investigation of its movement has caused
us, however, to revise our view of the object’s
date. The presence of the bar movement indicates
a later date than we had given it, of circa 184060. Indeed most such items to have come up
for auction in recent years have been advertised
in the catalogues as circa 1850, for example a
gold, enamel and diamond-set example offered
by Sotheby’s New York, 13 April 2011, Lot 45
which sold for a seemingly rather cheap $13,750.
CONCLUSION
A fact that becomes fully apparent on handling
the items is that the lenses were intended for
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