Another true little gem of a ladies pocket watch - Probus Scafusia without a
doubt.
The Watch
When looking to which pocket watch to show today, in order to compliment
Tonny's gold cased Ca. 63 dating from 1903 I first too took an golden oldie
(and a very different pocket watch) from the archive to post. But then I
changed my mind - deciding to keep that one for another day and to select this
watch from my Collection.
For a start unlike Tonny's nameless - this dial is clearly showing off it's
branding loudly (and as it should) proudly.
When I furst spotted this timepiece, I was pretty sure it was not original and
probably a re-case. This, as I had never seen (then) a silver cased Ladies
Watch from Schaffhausen and certainly all those in my collection were either
14K or 18K gold.
Writting to the seller, he came back with more pictures - including this one
of the inner case back.
Although no guarantee of course, that the Probus Scafusia stamp on it made the
watch legitmate, I felt more comforatable that indeed maybe Schaffhausen had
sold some german silver 0.900 cased ladies timepieces. However, the serial
number 25448 did not checkout. It had to be in my opinion another digit in
front there which I could not read.
The case back too was intriguing as it was chequered squares. Never seen that
before.
When the watch arrived, the secret of why it was silver cased was out.... this
was once a niello case. A few of the checked blocks, still have a trace of the
niello inlay. The rest was obviously painstakenly removed by someone.
Jeroen and I then stripped the movement out the case...
and I then approached and met with The Netherlands only practicing Niello fine
art jeweler and his protege student and together with them evaluated the case.
They indeed confirmed, that the black remenants on the case were niello and we
then proceeded to look at a full restoration.
Sadly, the conclusion was reached (after some phone calls to fellow jewelers
worldwide) that whilst there are still a handfull (read: vwery few) people
who have the skillset required to do niello, that the level of detail and
miniscule size of the case overall was way beyonjd anything they had ever
tried and none were confident enough to take on the challenge.
They however advised that possibly they best way forward was to try enamelling
the case. This was / is of course a possibilty - but in the end although not a
purist myself, I decided to not put a finish on the watch they was not there
originally. So the pocket watch case remains bare and without her niello - but
to me no the less nice an example of Probus Scafusia.
The movement runs well (here below with serial number edited out to protect
the innocent).
All in all, another little jewel of a ladies pocket watch.
One last photo to give a size comparison with a Gents IWC pocket watch.
And yes, the inner dust case shows the full serial number of the pocket watch,
which checks out, shows that the watch dates from 1918.
