Front, Back, Dial,
Cuvette, Case mark, Cuvette
mark, Movement, 2nd view of
movement, Movement finish close, DeLong
finish technique, Balance close, Sotheby's
tag, Sotheby's tag
Fred McIntyre noted in his sales journal that there was great interest in a smaller 12 size watch among the jewelers he visited. This watch is a handmade example by DeLong that appears to have been produced in response to those inputs. It was for many years exhibited in the Time Museum in Rockford Illinois and was sold in October 2004 in the final dispersal of the Time Museum at Sotheby's in New York.
The watch looks a bit like the drawing signed by DeLong that was retained with the factory drawings and remaining tooling. However, the resemblance is superficial and the layout is different. In particular the ratchet, winding and center wheel form a right triangle on this watch and they form an equilateral triangle on the watch in the drawing. The drawing may have been a first pass at the design.
The dial has suffered some damage, but the watch overall is in very good condition. The only marking on the movement is the word "ADJUSTED" on the pillar plate near the balance.
The watch has McIntyre's patent regulator, the DeLong patented banking pins and DeLong's patented semi-tangential escapement. It is 21 jewel with a jeweled barrel and cap jewels on the escape wheel. The pallet bridge is gold, but the pallet arbor is not capped.
I took some extreme close-ups of the finish on this watch to illustrate DeLong's favorite method of finishing. The plates are not damaskeened, but rather are milled with a diamond point tool. I have not seen the tool, so I don't know if DeLong made it with one point or 4 points. The technique is to make 4 parallel cuts spaced the width of the cut apart, then skip a distance equal to the width of the 4 cuts and then repeat. After the entire surface is traversed, the work is rotated 45 degrees and the pattern is repeated crossing the original pattern. The result is a very beautiful satin and polished diamond finish as is seen on the watches. The plates can be polished after the pattern has been laid down since the decoration is relatively deep compared to damaskeening.
The watch was purchased at Sotheby's by my friend Jon Hanson, who generously loaned it to me for these photographs.