How pocket watches have always been quietly ticking over in the luxury market Simon de Burton   Regular readers of collecting columns in magazines, newspapers and on the internet will be familiar with the perennial appearance of the headline ‘Pocket Watches are Back!’ (or words to that effect). It’s a statement that conjures images of people emerging from tube stations, laptop bags slung across shoulders, mobile phones in one hand and gold half-hunters in the other; of sneaker-wearing rappers denuded of their customary gem-set wristwatches but squinting at the 19th-century anachronisms hanging from the gold chains attached to the waistband of their parachute pants; of film stars at Cannes posing on the Croisette with a timepiece better associated with Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit.   Needless to say, it’s nonsense: pocket watches are not ‘back’ at all, not in the sense that there’s more than a minuscule chance that you’ll see anyone wearing one in normal, daily life. And when it comes to collecting. Pocket watches are not strictly back, either – largely because they never went away. While there has been a giant boom in the appreciation and value of wrist watches during the past 20 years – with the big money paid for new and old types alike hitting a peak in 2017 when a Patek Philippe ‘Grand Master Chime’ fetched Sfr 31m (£27.5 m) for charity in 2019 – pocket watches have always remained the quiet kings of portable horology. On June 10 this year,  for example, a gold pocket watch made by Isle of Man-based Roger Smith sold for $4.9m (£3.82m) at Phillips New York; a record price for any British timepiece. (pictured below) Smith constructed the 66mm watch with perpetual calendar and moon phases between 1991 and 1996 before presenting it for approval to celebrated horologist George Daniels, who pronounced: “You are now a watchmaker”.  Smith, who later became Daniels’ only apprentice, sold the watch in 2004 to finance the setting-up of his own R.W. Smith dial name for an undisclosed sum that was, undoubtedly, considerably lower than what the owner trousered in June after sensibly hanging on to it for 19 years. In the interim, Smith has gone from being an up-and-coming young watchmaker known only to a band of hard-core horophiles as the protégé of Daniels (who died in 2011 having earned the accolade of being the 20th century’s greatest watchmaker) to being regarded as one of the greatest makers of the era in his own right. Evidence of that can be seen in the fact that Smith’s ‘Pocket Watch Number 2’ exceeded the $4.5m and £4m respectively achieved in 2019 and 2017 for the two Daniels watches considered to have been his greatest creations – the Space Traveller’s ‘I’ and Space Traveller’s ‘II’. None of the above, however, come close to the $23.9m (£18.64) paid in 2014 for the Patek Philippe Supercomplication pocket watch originally delivered to New York banking tycoon Henry Graves Jnr in 1932 – a watch that has twice held the record for ‘world’s most expensive timepiece’ having fetched $11m (£8.58m) in 1999 in the Sotheby’s dispersal sale of American collector Seth Atwood’s Illinois ‘Time Museum’. Other seven-figure sums paid for pocket watches include $5m (£3.9m) apiece for two Calibre 89s produced by Patek Philippe to mark its 150th anniversary in 1989, $4.6m (£3.59) for an 1814 creation by the celebrated Abraham-Louis Breguet (widely regarded as the greatest of all makers) and $2.5m (£1.59) for a one-off, minute repeating model by Philippe Dufour, whose contemporary wrist watches are currently among the most collectable of all. And, as with wristwatches, a touch of celebrity ownership goes a long way in the pocket watch world. A Vacheron Constantin originally owned by King Fuad 1 of Egypt drew $2.7m (£2.11m) at specialist auction house Antiquorum back in 2005 and an unassuming Zenith model that once belonged to Mahatma Gandhi realised more than $2m (£1.56m) in 2009 – although it was sold with a pair of his old sandals, a rice bowl and his signature, round-frame spectacles. Farouk Pocket Watch by Vacheron Constantin, 1946 The true beauty of pocket watch collecting, however, is that it’s not necessary to have a seven-figure sum in order to ‘get into it;’. In fact, you don’t even need a six, five, or four-figure sum, because interesting pocket watches in working order can be had for a few hundred pounds. The value-for-money aspect is of obvious appeal, not least because it makes dial names such as Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet and Jaeger-LeCoultre attainable at far less cost than wristwatches from the same makers. Vacheron Constantin Pocket watch, courtesy of Somlo And the variety of pocket watches available is vast. From simple, three-hand, sealed-case models to half-hunters (in which a metal cover protects the crystal) to full hunters (hinged fronts and backs) and from watches with beautifully enamelled cases to others with hugely complicated movements, the scope is extensive. Henri Grandjean pocket watch with 18ct multi-coloured gold hunter case, 1880s Courtesy of Somlo There are automaton pocket watches, too, some with unexpected erotic scenes, and others made for export to Japan and China which sometimes, especially in the case of those made by Bovet, appear in pairs with mirror-image decoration. Other benefits of pocket watches is their large size compared with their wrist-borne counterparts. This can make them more interesting to look at, enables a greater number of complications to be included within them and makes them easier to repair, service and maintain. And for the older owner whose eyesight is perhaps not what it was, the great thing about a pocket watch is that it can be far easier to make out what time it is. But that’s only relevant when a pocket watch is put to daily use. Which is can usually be taken as an affectation – not an unequivocal sign that the days of concealing a timepiece about one’s person rather than on one’s wrist are actually ‘back’...

How the the humble genre swept its way to the highest ranks of the art world becoming one of the most sought after movements in contemporary design and woodwork.  By Emma Crichton-Miller   Twenty years ago, Robert Travers of the London Modern British gallery Piano Nobile told me; “I was at Sotheby’s for a sale, when I walked through another sale of Modern Design. I saw a table. It was very splendid. I discovered it was by George Nakashima.”   From that point, Travers began to collect good pieces when he came upon them, and indeed deal in them: “I like that East meets West aesthetic and Nakashima’s lovely feel for natural timber.” These have become an essential part of the gallery’s display of their roster of Modern British artists, both in the gallery and at art fairs. Travers comments; “The furniture is not too extreme, but there is this quiet intensity of engagement with the material that is complementary to our pictures.”  George Nakashima Floating Shelf and Frank Auerbach portrait of David Landau at Piano Nobile's stand at The Treasure House Fair 2023 Image courtesy of PIANO NOBILE, London. Today, the market of the Japanese American woodworker, architect and furniture maker, is flourishing.    George Nakashima, born in the US in 1905, is widely acknowledged to be the founder of the American Studio Craft Furniture movement, which had its birth in the rural artists' colony of New Hope, Pennsylvania, in the 1940s. After travelling the world as a young man, including stints working as an architect and designer in Japan and India, it was in an internment camp in Idaho that Nakashima met the Japanese master carpenter Gentaro Hikogawa and began to apply himself to making one-off pieces of hand-crafted furniture, using traditional Japanese joinery techniques. In 1943, the American architect Antonin Raymond successfully sponsored Nakashima’s release from the camp and invited him to his farm in New Hope, Pennsylvania. There, in his studio and workshop, Nakashima began to explore the organic expressiveness of wood, and embarked on his hunt for timbers with ever more dynamic knots and burls and figured grains.  While he constructed many different kinds of distinctive furniture, he is best known for his large tables made from giant slices of tree, sometimes entire, sometimes linked by butterfly joints, with the natural edge of the trunk creating the contoured edge of the table.  Minguren II Coffee Table by George Nakashima Image Courtesy of PIANO NOBILE, London. Detail of butterfly joint on Minguren II Coffee Table by George Nakashima Image courtesy of PIANO NOBILE, London. Nakashima drew equally on his Japanese heritage and North America’s distinguished Arts and Crafts tradition. Already Wharton Esherick, born in 1889, had begun to work by hand with wood in the 1920s. He was followed by Phillip Lloyd Powell on the East Coast, while on the West Coast Sam Maloof, Jack Rogers Hopkins and Arthur Espenet Carpenter formed another group.  A second generation included the daring sculptural designers Paul Evans (1931-1987), and Wendell Castle (1932-2018), Judy Hensley McKie (b.1944) and Mira Nakashima (b.1942), George’s daughter, who for many years continued to oversee production of furniture in her father’s workshop alongside making her own work. Each pursued their own personal aesthetic, using a wide range of materials, but rooted in a dedication to hand processes - whether the sensuous wood carving of Wendell Castle or Paul Evans’s sculpted metalwork.     Leading collectors of the day - including Nelson Rockefeller, Stephen Spielberg and Diane von Furstenberg - bought enthusiastically, alongside many homemakers who saw in these makers’ work a rebuff to modern mass-production. In 1973, Nelson Rockefeller commissioned two hundred pieces from Nakashima alone for his house in Pocantico Hills, New York. During the 1980s, however, the work of the studio craft makers fell out of fashion. Indeed, Robert Aibel of Moderne Gallery in Philadelphia, a leading gallery for American Studio Craft Furniture, remembers buying a Nakashima dining table and chairs in 1985 for $3000 from a doctor who referred to it as “used furniture.” Aibel had an instinct that there was a market out there, however, and, slowly, the market rebuilt, until the dizzying heights of the early 2000s, when, in December 2006, at Sotheby’s New York, a beautifully patterned, wildly irregular table made from a single cross-section slice of redwood burl, created by Nakashima in 1988 for his patrons, Dr. Arthur and Evelyn Krosnick of Princeton, New Jersey sold for $822,400.  Since then, other notable auction records include the £225,000 paid for the unique stack-laminated walnut three-seater sofa by Wendell Castle, from 1974, achieved at Phillips London in April 2018, and the $382,000 paid in 2017 at Rago Arts and Auction for a 1977 Paul Evans cabinet. Unique three-seater sofa by Wendell Castle Stack laminated walnut, leather, 1974 Image courtesy of Phillips Conoid Bench by George Nakashima Image courtesy of Geoffrey Diner Gallery   Geoffrey Diner, based in Washington DC, a dealer whose own exemplary cross-disciplinary collecting provides a model for how great art and great design converse together, is a specialist in the finest works of George Nakashima. Growing up in Buffalo, New York, where the leaders of the American Arts & Crafts Movement were highly regarded, he expanded his interest through the 1980s to British Arts and Crafts, as well as contemporary makers. Today, his focus is post-war art and design, and his outstanding display of fine pieces at Treasure House Fair in 2023 included a highly desirable Nakashima Conoid Bench, with split seat and stick back, from 1973, and a monumental “Minguren II” coffee table. Geoffrey Diner Gallery at The Treasure House Fair 2023 Image Courtesy of The Treasure House Fair 

Casting a shine on the rare yet prolific women silversmiths Emma Crichton-Miller This year, among many other significant objects on their stand at Treasure House Fair, New York silver specialists S.J. Shrubsole had placed a beautiful silver porringer. Dated to 1675, during the reign of Charles II, it has two elegant, serpentine handles and the bottom third of the bowl is chased with lively acanthus leaves. What makes the piece particularly interesting, however, is that it was made by a woman. Katherine Stevens was the wife of the goldsmith Roger Stevens of Foster Lane, who died very suddenly in 1673. Rather than slip into penury, Katherine took over the business, including the bound apprentice John Duck, who later married her daughter. Whatever the division of labour within this small family business, it is her mark, not that of the today better-known John Duck, that appears on this porringer, which has a degree of accomplishment that suggests it is not the work of her young apprentice. A Charles II Antique English Silver Porringer, 1675 by Katherine Stevens Courtesy of S.J. Shrubsole That women figure importantly in British silversmithing in the eighteenth century has long been well known. In 1935, Sir Ambrose Heal, in his magisterial work The London Goldsmiths, determined that between 1697 and the Victorian era, a total of 63 women silversmiths, each with their own registered mark, worked in London alone. He also revealed that many of these women had definite trade designations in the records: they were not just widows running their late husband’s businesses but hands-on designers and craftsmen. Among the most famous are Louisa Perina Courtauld, Eliza Godfrey and Hester Bateman, but these just mark the peaks of a booming trade that was nation-wide. Another piece shown by Shrubsole was as extraordinarily large silver tray, hand-rolled, from 1729, with the mark of Sarah Parr, widow of Thomas Parr I. Philippa Glanville, formerly chief curator of the metal, silver and jewellery department at the Victoria and Albert Museum and co-author of  the 1990 volume ‘Women Silversmiths 1685-1845’ has noted other names elsewhere - for instance, Welthian Goodyear, a Bristol spoonmaker, Ellen Dare of Taunton and  Elisabeth Haselwood of Norwich. Furthermore, as Lewis Smith of London dealership Koopman Rare Art suggests, “There must have been other women who never gained a mark - the workshop of a silversmith was not a genteel place and there would have been female workers and family members.”  The collectors’ market is focused inevitably on the finest silver, those pieces which have survived multiple disasters of war and bankruptcy. The greatest boost to British goldsmithing in the early eighteenth century was undoubtedly the arrival of highly skilled Huguenot craftsmen, fleeing religious persecution in France. Elizabeth Godfrey, for instance, born Elizabeth Pantin in 1720, was the daughter of the distinguished Huguenot silversmith Simon Pantin. Her first husband, Abraham Buteux, was also a goldsmith from the French immigrant community. Elizabeth registered her first mark as Elizabeth Buteux in 1731, designed, as was customary, in a lozenge shape, to denote a widow,  presumably after her husband died. She carried on her first husband’s silver business until her marriage to another goldsmith, Benjamin Godfrey, in 1732. Elizabeth registered a second mark as Elizabeth Godfrey in 1741, presumably when Benjamin died. The majority of her work is in the flamboyant French rococo style then becoming popular in England amongst the wealthy. Smith says of her, “By comparison with the work of her second husband, Benjamin, Eliza Godfrey’s work has a certain finesse.” The set of three monumental sugar casters by her they currently have “are the best rococo casters we have ever had - the quality of the chasing alone.”  A Monumental Set of Three 18th Century Rococo Casters by Elizabeth Godfrey Courtesy of Koopman Rare Art Louisa Courtauld, born in 1729, was also of Huguenot extraction. Her father, Pierre Abraham Ogier, was a silk weaver, who brought his family to London when she was a child. Her husband, Samuel Courtauld, was the son of Augustin Courtauld, a Huguenot metalsmith. A portrait of Louisa Courtauld from the 1770s, grandly posed in silk, testifies to the strength of the Courtauld business, appealing to the highest ranks in society. A year after her husband died, in 1766, Courtauld registered her own mark, continuing to run the business until she created a new joint mark with her son, Samuel Courtauld II, in 1777. Courtauld was not an unusual figure in eighteenth century London.  In 2019 an exhibition running through the City of London displayed the business cards of the many women entrepreneurs from the period, beside their original premises. The exhibition’s curator, University of Cambridge historian Dr Amy Louise Erickson, commented: “There was nothing unusual about these businesswomen at the time. They were members of trade families and it was normal for women to be in charge. This history has been completely overlooked.” A George III Antique English Silver Coffee Pot by Louisa Courtauld, 1764 Courtesy of S.J Shrubsole Perhaps the most famous example is Hester Bateman. Born to a poor family in 1709, in 1730 she married John Bateman, a goldsmith and chainmaker, before inheriting his business on his death in 1760. After registering her mark in 1761, she built a formidable enterprise, helped by her children and apprentice John Linney. By using cost-efficient manufacturing methods, her workshops were able to turn out thousands of pieces - coffee pots, tea urns, cruets, teapots, salvers, goblets, salts, sugar tongs, and flatware - all of elegant but simple design, appealing to the middle classes.  A Pair of George III Antique English Silver Wine Labels by Hester Bateman, c. 1770 Courtesy of S.J. Shrubsole According to both Smith and Jim McConnaughy of S.J. Shrubsole, there is a strong interest in female silversmiths, especially in America, where, suggests Smith, they appeal especially to their fellow women entrepreneurs. The price differential between men and women silversmiths is negligible, says Lewis Smith.