Gold Fob with an Enamel Flower Spray

A lady's fob watch from Geneva of about 1840, in solid 18ct gold, with its painted enamel intact. That last part is the story. Painted enamel is the most fragile thing a watch can wear: it chips at the edges, crazes with heat and cold, and loses its colour to light. This spray, a full-blown rose, a blue pansy, forget-me-nots and green foliage fired into the gold, has none of that. The colours are still bright, the surface clean and whole, with only the light mellowing of age.

The flowers sit on a ground of hand-worked engine-turning, front and back, framed in chased rococo scrollwork. Behind the original glass is a silver dial engine-turned in a radiating fan pattern scattered with tiny engraved sprigs, with slim black Roman numerals and a pair of finely pierced gilt hands. It takes its key through the back, as everything of its date did, and it winds and runs.

Inside, the gold cuvette carries the full signature of Alliez, Bachelard et Terond Fils of Geneva with its serial number, and every number on the watch agrees. The movement is a gilt cylinder calibre jewelled in ruby, the proper specification for a Geneva piece of this grade.

At 36mm it wears as a fob or pendant watch, on a chain as it was meant to be, or it sits in a cabinet with the enamel facing out. Watches like this were made in quantity and mostly used up; the ones that survive with their enamel perfect are the exception.

The maker's standing is set out in The Maker; the marks, the movement and the condition are in the drawers below.