Featured Bacon and Bates "Regal" Pocket Watch. 1899 Christmas Catalog Picture

From a Montgomery Ward 1899 Christmas ad mailer.
Bacon and Bates "Regal" Pocket Watch 14K
Size 18, 11 jewel movement.
1899 price: $7.00, Hunting case $8.00.

Putting this up for show and tell. No other reason.

 

Less than meets the eye. It's gold filled to the cheapest standard, 10 years, and the 11 jewel movement is less than the optimum 15 or 17 jewels.

Still, it would have looked gold for long enough, and worked as well as needed. An all gold case would have been about $30 at the time.

 

I do like the design on the case. Still very 19th-century looking.

 

The makers name made me smile for some reason, Another makers name that does the same for me is Adie & Lovekin.

 

I wonder who did that illustration and how long it took. Was there a technique for creating engravings from photographs? Maybe it was only necessary to produce a drawing that looked like an engraving, and mechanical processes took over after that. I think that both rotogravure and photogravure result in dot matrix prints - processes that post date this.

 

I'm curious. Does anyone know whether Montgomery Ward and Sears would have been comparable, quality wise?

 

There were different engraving processes used in the 19th century. The Graphics Atlas provides a way to compare some of them, under the Compare tab.
http://graphicsatlas.org/

You could look under the Pre-Photographic section.

There are also articles such as this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoengraving

Or this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_engraving

oooh, this article looks interesting:
http://collation.folger.edu/2016/01/photo-manual-illustration/

 

That last article is interesting, but doesn't really provide an answer. Being 'photo heavy', I'll have to get on a faster machine before getting the full impact. Perhaps the most telling remark comes right at the end, "where the original image is a photograph copied to (or even created on) a printing plate, but cut by hand". That would not be difficult to do, given tintype technology, and would provide the engraver with a very specific and detailed template.

 

LOVE the engraving on that watch!!!!!

 

I'm sure there are a lot better explanations out there than what I linked. Unlike some of the members here, there are lots of times I just quickly look and post links, not always looking for the best.

 

The watch case was most likely die stamped and not engraved.

 

It certainly looks spectacular in the picture they provided in their catalog.

I spent a little time looking for a real one, to see what it would look like in real life and compare to the picture, but am mostly finding chains, fobs, lockets and bracelets by Bates and Bacon. Pocket knives, too.

 

Actually, the cheapest standard of gold-filling was 5 years.

 

I satnd corrected, although I have never seen an example of a 5 year case.

 

I had one, an 1890s Waltham, before I sold it.

From what I recall, case-plating went:

5, 10, 20, and then the highest was 25. The vast majority of 'gold pocketwatches' are more than likely just gold-filled/rolled gold.