Watch-Paper Prints

Watch-paper of Sam Toulmin, The Strand, London

Watch-paper of Rob Fleetwood, London

Thos. Field Watch Maker
Aylesbury
Wedding & Mourning
Rings made Likewise
most Money given for
Second Hand Plate
Watches &c

[note: the above 3 watchpapers have equation tables]

George Prior Clock and Watchmaker
in Prescot St Goodman's Field, London

Un-cut watch-paper/trade-card of
Richard Whiteaves, Clock & Watch Maker
Fleet Street, London [1801]

Watch-paper of William Loudan,
Blackfriars, London (maybe 1825-1840)

Igglesden Watch Maker,
Silversmith & Jeweller,
High Street Chatham
[garter-belt border bearing inscription]

Green cut edged with yellow centre watch-paper,
stylised sunflower, with smiley face, in outer case. (~1732-1770)

Richardson Watch & Clock Maker, Brampton
To Make a Watch go Slower
turn the Regulator the same way you Wind up,
Faster the contrary

Thos. Brown
Clock & Watch Maker
Birmingham (1796)

John Jarvis
Watch & Clock Maker
Whitchurch
All kinds of Clocks Watches
Musical Boxes Plate Jewellery &c
cleaned & repaired

Mirth - Anguish
(coloured print of dentist drawing tooth from patient)
[presumably this is a 'ready-made', cut from a book or print]

What!?

Edwd Glase
Clock & Watch Maker Bridgnorth
Repeating Watches Carefully Repaired

W. Owen
Clock & Watch Maker
Jeweller & Silversmith
Oswestry

Bowen & Downes
Watch & Clock Makers
London

John Wieland
Clock & Watch Maker
Penton Row, Walworth
Tempus Fugit

An un-cut watch-paper of Jonathan Ager,
watch and clock-maker
Clerkenwell, London

Johnathan Woollett,
Watch & Clock Maker, Maidstone

Watchpaper; painted with grotesque seated woman with bowl of gruel

Watchpaper; printed in colour with three angels
surrounding a circular cartouche on which
is written the Lord's Prayer (about 1818)

Watch-paper in situ
(Aaaah! so that's what they do with them!!)
[random image from some auction site]

Moments in Time

1360: Henry de Vick constructs the first (totally) mechanical clock for King Charles V of France [arguable? probably]
1475: First record of a minute hand on a clock
Mid-1500s: First wearable timepieces: several inches in diameter worn on chain around the neck or pinned to the clothes --- "later in the century there was a trend for unusually shaped watches, and clock-watches shaped like books, animals, fruit, stars, flowers, insects, crosses, and even skulls (Death's head watches) were made."
1610: Glass face covers first appear
1675: King Charles II of England introduced waistcoats which coincides with the ascendancy of the pocketwatch (first made in the early 1500s) over the more cumbersome timepieces
1850: Mass production, jewel bearings, interchangeable parts; price fall leads to a great increase in the numbers of people gadding about with their own horological device
WWI: Wrist watches begin their ascendancy (checking a pocketwatch was inconvenient as a soldier)


Hands up anyone who knew what a watch-paper print was? Yeah, I thought so. Me neither. Even after jagging all the images I wasn't quite sure how they were specifically used until I found that last picture above.

Originally designed as a simple protective insert, watch-papers came to be used as an advertising medium for the watchmakers in the second half of the 18th century and another means by which print artists could ply their trade. These types of 'professional' or conservative watch-papers form the majority of the genre, but a popular 'amateur' variety also emerged that were valued as keepsakes.

"Women embroidered flower patterns on silk watch papers and made cutout or pinpricked designs of hearts, doves, forget-me-nots and wreaths. They also made them of woven hair or crocheted them from fine silk thread or quilted them. Hand-stitched monograms in wreaths of laurel or moss roses and hand-painted watch papers were especially popular.

Often early handmade watch papers took the form of a valentine or birthday greeting or a memorial for dead loved ones, showing a tombstone shadowed by a weeping willow. Examples have also been found with the Lord's Prayer in minute hand-writing and with a miniature map of part of the United States."

The British Museum Prints database has over 700 specimens of watch-paper prints available and although there is often little in the way of background, I would think the average date is around 1800 (I believe a large proportion of their stock derives from a single donor collection). [toggle down to 'object type' and search with 'watch-paper']

• 'Watch Papers Are More Than Protection' by Bob Brooke at Antique Spotlights (origin of quote immediately above)
• Wikipedia: watch -- pocketwatch -- clock
• 'American Watch Papers' by Dorothy Elizabeth Spear, 1951/2 - WorldCat record.
• 'Watch papers from Essex, England' (?1807-1841) - WorldCat record. {these were the only books I found : it's a very very esoteric subject and searching for any information was surprisingly difficult; but then, I didn't put in a great effort}
• Lew Jaffre has a few more example pictures at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie (including one engraved by Paul Revere in 1781).
• Addit: The plot of 'The Dean's Watch' by Elizabeth Goudge (1960) involves, in part, a watch-paper (thanks Eve!)
• Addit: The National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors has a museum in Pennsylvania.
  

The Genre of the Monstrous

"But if it so happens ... a work ... under pain of otherwise becoming shameful or false, requires fantasy ... [and that] certain limbs or elements of a figure are altered by borrowing from other species, for example transforming into a dolphin the hinder end of a griffon or a stag ... these alterations will be excellent and the substitution, however unreal it may seem, deserves to be declared a fine invention in the genre of the monstrous.

When a painter introduces into this kind of work of art chimerae and other imaginary beings in order to divert and entertain the senses and also to captivate the eyes of mortals who long to see unclassified and impossible things, he shows himself more respectful of reason than if he produced the usual figures of men or of animals."
~~Michelangelo~~ [source - Amazon - Amazon]

The British Museum Prints Database entry refers to this 1638 suite of prints as: "Set of twelve grotesque figures representing the twelve months of the year, printed probably from four plates in four strips of three figures each" that were "probably meant to be printed or pasted onto a folding map".

The series is by Denis Boutemie (or Denise or Daniel Boutemy aka Dionisio Bottonieri), a French jeweller, goldsmith and print engraver. Background details are sparse on the web, but his father was a goldsmith and it was through his contacts that Denis obtained work as a goldsmith in Rome for extended periods in the first few decades of the 17th century. He was active as an engraver (as he was best known in France) from 1619 until after 1658.

The prints have both the occasional obscure allegorical as well as obvious satirical dimension, by turns mocking dandies or presenting seasonal motifs; although the references tend to dissolve into grotesque absurdity - and happily so - in the spirit of Jacques Callot and François Desprez (see: one, two for eg.), among others.
[also see the previous Denis Boutemie entry: Fantastic Headdresses]

The main authority on Boutemie, sadly not online, appears to be a 1992 article in Print Quarterly (contents) by noted ornamental print scholar, Peter Fuhring^¶, called 'Denise Boutemie: A Seventeenth-Century Virtuoso' (pp. 46-55).

¶ Addit: Dr Fuhring advises that he contributed to another article with Michèle Bimbenet-Privat in which Boutemie is discussed: ‘Le style « cosses de pois ». L’orfèvrerie et la gravure à Paris sous Louis XIII’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, January 2002, pp. 1-224.

The 1658 portrait of Boutemie below - source - by Nicolas Cochin precedes a poetic dedication for an unnamed collection of Boutemie's illustrations which formed part of a large series of albums of French print artists (I think).

Fantastic Headdresses

These outlandish grotesque masks or headdresses -- looking like operatic design drawings or maybe a stoned costumer 's submission for 'Eyes Wide Shut'* -- are from a suite of twenty engravings after Denis Boutemie from 1638.

The work is entitled: 'Ouvrage Rare et Nouveau Contenant Plusieurs Desseins de Marveilleuse Recreation sous Diverses Caprices et Gentilesses' (known as Fantastic Headdresses), sourced from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

All of the available images from the collection have been posted and some background artefact has been removed. A later reversed version of the final image above was seen here previously, so it was great to accidentally discover the original engravings. I had been searching around on Boutemie after finding another whimsical (but different) set of his prints, which I'll post in the next day or so is here: The Genre of the Monstrous.

Forest Fungi

These two works have no connection other than they hit the radar at about the same time. I think they're both solid or honest attempts, from either end of the 19th century, to present specimen illustrations with little in the way of stylistic embellishment. The book on fungi, in particular, seems to be be a fairly comprehensive review of the phylum, with just as many plates devoted to the often overlooked and less visually arresting smaller species - as well as attempts at depicting the obscure life cycles - as there are for the traditional mushroom and toadstool forms. (The plates chosen above don't really reflect this.)

'Das System der Pilze und Schwämme: ein Versuch' (~An attempt at a system of fungi and sponges) by CGD Nees von Esenbeck, 1817, is online at the University of Heidelberg. (hand-coloured engravings)

'Flore Forestière :Illustrée Arbres et Arbustes du Centre de l'Europe' (~Forest flora: illustrated trees and shrubs from central Europe) by C de Kirkwan, 1872, is online at the Missouri Botanical Gardens Botanicus website. (chromolithographs)