Chinese-Market Silver, Shichen Dial

In 1822, Édouard Bovet stepped ashore at Canton with watches to sell, and within a generation his family name had become the everyday Cantonese word for the object itself. The Bovets built the China trade from Fleurier, ran it for four decades, and lost it in the 1860s to the counterfeiting their success invited. This watch was made in the middle of that story, most likely in the 1850s, and it left the Val-de-Travers with one destination in mind.

The dial says so at a glance: two systems share one enamel face, the twelve double-hour characters of the Chinese day around the outside, Western Roman numerals inside them, and the quarter divisions dotted between, read by three blued steel hands, the slender centre seconds sweeping the whole dial in the Chinese-market manner. It is clean, with no chips or hairlines, and behind the original glass it has survived nearly two centuries of use.

Open the back and the second audience appears. Chinese-market watches were sold as much on their movements as their dials, and this one is fire-gilt, its bridges covered edge to edge in cut decoration, its ruby jewels seated in screwed gold chatons: a mechanism made to be shown.

The case is sterling silver, 55mm, its lion passant mark worn but legible, carrying the handling marks of a long working life without dents or repairs. Winding is by key through the back, with separate arbors for the spring and the hands, and it winds, sets and runs, keeping time.

Watches like this crossed the world under sail. This one still has everything it crossed with: its dial, its engraving, its silver and its mechanism, working.

The marks, the movement and the condition are set out piece by piece in the drawers below; the double-time dial and the retailer's cartouche are set out in The Dial.