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Lot Essay
Accompanied by a custom-made 18K gold presentation box in the form of a horseshoe with finely chased and embossed foliate scrollwork in high relief, the hinged cover depicting the same blank cartouche as on the reverse of the watch, stamped with casemaker's initials HS possibly for H. Samuel and London date letter for 1900.
Samuel & Son
A. Samuel & Son are listed in The Directory of Gold & Silversmiths, Jewellers & Allied Traders 1838-1914 by John Culme, Volume 1, p. 402, as "manufacturers of keyless and other watches, also importers of Geneva watches. By 1897 they are listed as watch manufacturers at 94 Hatton Garden, EC".
Nicole Nielsen
Towards the end of the Victorian era and for the first 30 years of the 20th Century Nicole, Nielsen & Co. crafted some of the finest and most complicated English watches ever made.
In 1839 Adolphe Nicole and Jules Capt, both talented Swiss watchmakers, set up business in London at 80B Dean Street. The firm later moved to 14 Soho Square where it remained until the company finally closed in 1934. Nicole & Capt were highly successful and won medals in many international exhibitions such as Paris in 1855 and 1867, Philadelphia in 1878 and Sydney in 1879. In 1876 Jules Capt died and in the same year his place as partner was filled by the Danish-born watchmaker Sophus Emil Nielsen and the company became Nicole, Nielsen & Co. By 1880 the company was being run by Nielsen. They specialized in making super-complicated keyless watches often incorporating specifications such as perpetual calendar, chronograph, split seconds chronograph, repetition, temperature, equation of time and their most famous escapement: the Nicole Nielsen tourbillon.
Invented by Breguet (1747-1823), the tourbillon is an escapement that revolves so that the balance pallets and escape wheel move through all the vertical positions in a given time period, usually once every minute. Delicate, expensive and fascinating to observe the tourbillon was Nicole Nielsen's specialty. The Company designed their own tourbillon carriage, instantly recognizable and revered by collectors.
Many of their best watches were made for top retailers such as Smith & Sons, founded circa 1851, one of London's leading firms for high quality and complicated watches at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
Samuel & Son
A. Samuel & Son are listed in The Directory of Gold & Silversmiths, Jewellers & Allied Traders 1838-1914 by John Culme, Volume 1, p. 402, as "manufacturers of keyless and other watches, also importers of Geneva watches. By 1897 they are listed as watch manufacturers at 94 Hatton Garden, EC".
Nicole Nielsen
Towards the end of the Victorian era and for the first 30 years of the 20th Century Nicole, Nielsen & Co. crafted some of the finest and most complicated English watches ever made.
In 1839 Adolphe Nicole and Jules Capt, both talented Swiss watchmakers, set up business in London at 80B Dean Street. The firm later moved to 14 Soho Square where it remained until the company finally closed in 1934. Nicole & Capt were highly successful and won medals in many international exhibitions such as Paris in 1855 and 1867, Philadelphia in 1878 and Sydney in 1879. In 1876 Jules Capt died and in the same year his place as partner was filled by the Danish-born watchmaker Sophus Emil Nielsen and the company became Nicole, Nielsen & Co. By 1880 the company was being run by Nielsen. They specialized in making super-complicated keyless watches often incorporating specifications such as perpetual calendar, chronograph, split seconds chronograph, repetition, temperature, equation of time and their most famous escapement: the Nicole Nielsen tourbillon.
Invented by Breguet (1747-1823), the tourbillon is an escapement that revolves so that the balance pallets and escape wheel move through all the vertical positions in a given time period, usually once every minute. Delicate, expensive and fascinating to observe the tourbillon was Nicole Nielsen's specialty. The Company designed their own tourbillon carriage, instantly recognizable and revered by collectors.
Many of their best watches were made for top retailers such as Smith & Sons, founded circa 1851, one of London's leading firms for high quality and complicated watches at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.