Repeater watch

Johann Wutky

ca. 1675–80 · Case: pierced and incised brass, with silver dial; Movement: brass; steel, partly blued; and silver · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Breslau, which in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had been a major center of metalworking, was by about 1680 still p roducing a type of watchcase that was fashionable in South Germany around 1600. (Unlike the earlier watchcases, this one shows no evidence of ever having been gilded.) The movement, however, was more up-to-date; indeed, Breslau’s reputation for watchmaking was such that the Swiss clockmaker Jacob I Enderlin (1628–1689) appears to have gone there in order to learn the craft of watchmaking before returning in 1658 to his native city of Basel.

Artist

Johann Wutky

Date

ca. 1675–80

Medium

Case: pierced and incised brass, with silver dial; Movement: brass; steel, partly blued; and silver

Culture

Austrian, Breslau (Wrocław)

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917