Waltham W.W.Co. Grade Model 1857 15 Jewel Hunting Case Pocket Watch (1875)

About this Waltham W.W.Co. Model 1857 Hunting Case

This Waltham comes from the generation of watches that made America a watchmaking nation. Its Model 1857 movement descends from the first American watch built in quantity from interchangeable parts, and this example is the Waltham Watch Co. grade, which collectors rank second only to the Appleton, Tracy & Co. among the standard 1857 grades. Serial 787,810 was finished at Waltham between June 1875 and May 1876 in a run of 200, and it is one of Waltham's early factory stem-wind, lever-set movements, made when most of its siblings still wound and set with a key. It is housed in a heavy, hand-engraved nickel silver hunting case and shows a crisp American Watch Co. enamel dial with heat-blued hands. At 150 years old it is in excellent condition throughout.

The gilt full plate movement carries 15 jewels: hole and cap jewels for the balance, an impulse jewel, the two pallet stones, and jeweled pivots for the pallet arbor, escape wheel, fourth wheel and third wheel. Its split compensation balance, fitted with screws, was adjusted at the factory to hold its rate through heat and cold. The plate is signed Waltham Watch Co. in flowing script and stamped Fogg's Patent, Waltham's safety pinion of 1865, which unscrews itself if the mainspring breaks so the recoil cannot damage the train. The balance cock and its foot are hand engraved in deep scrollwork and fastened with blued steel screws. Waltham began making the 1857 in stem-wind form in the early 1870s, and this one sets by a small lever at the edge of the dial, so the hands can only be moved deliberately, the same safeguard the railroads later made a requirement. In 1872 Waltham's distributor listed the grade at $38 in a silver hunting case, a high grade movement for its day.

The case is a full hunter in nickel silver, the alloy of copper, nickel and zinc also known as German silver. It is a substantial case with a reassuring weight in the hand, and both covers are hand engraved with a radiating fan of feathered panels around a vacant shield, ready for a monogram. Inside, the covers are engine turned in concentric rings and the band is finely reeded, so the case shows both freehand engraving and lathe-cut work. The front cover closes over the crystal and dial to protect them from knocks, and every hinge still closes crisply. This case not not been polished to preserve the beautiful patina that only comes with time. Few cases from the 1870s survive with engraving this sharp, and this one is a wonderful window into the art of American horology.

The dial is white enamel signed American Watch Co., the name the company used from 1859 to 1885, with bold Roman numerals, an outer minute track and a sunk subsidiary seconds register at six. Heat-blued steel spade hands read cleanly against the white. Using the watch is part of its charm: press the crown and the front cover springs open to reveal the dial; wind it at the crown; and to set the time, open the bezel, swing out the setting lever beside the dial, turn the crown to move the hands, then return the lever. The dial and hands are pristine.

This movement was finished in the months leading up to America's hundredth birthday. On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call, three days after his patent was issued. On May 10 the Centennial Exhibition opened in Philadelphia, where President Grant and Emperor Pedro II of Brazil started the giant Corliss engine, and nearly ten million visitors came to see American industry. Waltham ran its watchmaking machinery in Machinery Hall and won an award for its system of watchmaking, and Jacques David of Longines toured Waltham that year and went home to warn that the Swiss industry would be destroyed unless it mechanized. On August 1, Colorado joined the Union as the Centennial State. This Waltham is the kind of watch that so impressed the world in 1876.

All Vintage Pocket Watches are cleaned, oiled and adjusted for accuracy and warranted for one full year from the date of purchase.