Watches - Tapa dura

The British Museum watch collection is unsurpassed anywhere in the world, and tells the story of the watch which spans an incredible 500 years. Within the collection are examples ranging from sixteenth-century early stackfreed watches made in south Germany to exquisite decorative watches of the seventeenth century. Everyday watches from the eighteenth century and precision-made chronometers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are included, as are examples of mass-produced watches from the modern era. All the major makers of Europe and America will be represented, many of them with multiple examples. There are, for example, thirty-one genuine watches from the London workshops of Thomas Tompion, whose reputation stretched far and wide even in his own time. Another famous maker is Swiss-born Abraham Louis Breguet, who lived and worked in Paris supplying the best that money could buy to the crown heads and aristocratic families of the western world.

David Thompson is the Curator of Horology at the British Museum. His previous publications include Clocks (British Museum Press, 2004)