• gilt full plate movement, escapement converted to lever, decoratively pierced and engraved balance cock and foot, plain flat balance, now with blued steel balance spring, worm and wheel set-up, Egyptian pillars, modified fusee now with chain • the silver dial with central disc engraved with Father Time carrying a scythe in one hand and pointing to the hours with the other and inscribed 'I Stay for No Man', chapter ring with engraved Roman numerals, outer silver date ring with small indicator on brass ring • plain polished inner case, the centre of the back with an engraved crest of a Thistle and Bee, shuttered winding aperture, leather covered outer case with fine piqué work • movement signed Robert Williamson, Royal Exchange

The Collection of Lord Harris of Belmont

Antiquorum, Geneva, The Sandberg Watch Collection, 31st March and 1st April, 2001, lot 138 

Terence Camerer Cuss, The English Watch 1585-1970, p. 90, pl. 42

To the dial centre is a revolving silver disc engraved with Father Time pointing to the hours with one hand whilst, in the other, he holds a scythe. Above his head a banner reads 'I stay for no man' and his gait certainly implies that he is in a hurry. Interestingly, the Greeks confused their word for 'time', chronos with that of Cronus the god of agriculture whose attribute was a sickle, in due course this became the scythe of Father Time. His wings seem to have first appeared in the illustrations of Renaissance artists. See: James Hall, Hall’s Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 1993, pp. 119-120. Robert Williamson was apprenticed in October 1658 and Free of the Clockmakers’ Company in 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London. He became Clockmakers’ Company Assistant in 1682, Warden from 1695 and Master in 1698. Williamson is recorded as working from St Bartholomew’s Lane in 1691, close to the Royal Exchange. See Brian Loomes, The Early Clockmakers of Great Britain, 1981, p. 580.