BADA Member Video Series: Pieces of Time

Welcome to Pieces of Time. My name is Jonny Waxman. My main speciality is horology, that's antique pocket watches and dating back from the early 17th century right up to the early 20th century. I've been based in Gray's since I first started in the field which was in 1976. We have a little selection of a few different bits and pieces that we have in stock. So the front piece which I like very very much is a singing bird box with a horn case and silver mounts. The bird pops up, does a little sing song and then closes and it does it a few times on every single wind. These have become very very popular and very hard to find today in good condition. Next is very very pretty skull watch. Beautifully chased and pierced skull with masonic markings on the back and very very nice verge movement by a French maker. Again in lovely clean condition. Next is the oldest watch I currently have in stock is a Verge French pocket watch, single-handed with a Medici coat of arms on the lid. What I particularly like on it is the serpent hand, single serpent hand, really really lovely example. And then this is a very lovely interesting watch, has a mock pendulum, silver Champley dial, lovely clean movement. The interesting feature on this watch is that when this watch was made Catholic church was not really very very popular at the time, so if you were a Catholic you had to hide your religion a little bit. So this one's got a concealed plaque in the back of the Pope at the time, so that watch is about 1700, 1710, but really really wonderful example. And then we go on to another watch line. This is a beautiful beautiful quality Chinese market enamel watch with an exceedingly rare movement. The watch movement was made by in Switzerland. Beautiful engraved, pierced and engraved movement, wonderful silver enamel back, pearl set front and back, beautiful wonderful Chinese market dial with centre beating seconds. Just an absolutely stunning watch. As you can hear I get excited about all my watches but they're all so different and I absolutely love what we do. We have so many more watches in the shop and we just love it. If collectors, just interested people, people go to the BM, go to the Wallace Collection, pay us a visit as well, you don't need to buy, we just love seeing new faces in the shop.