In-Depth A 17th Century David Ramsay High-Complication Pocket Watch Made For The King Is Coming To Auction

Photographs by Georgia Griffiths

This is a pocket watch made circa 1613 by David Ramsay. At the time, not only was this the most accurate and most complicated watch ever made, rubbing shoulders with automata and Hans Schlottheim’s Mechanical Galleon, but it was also amongst the most complicated mechanical objects on the planet. If this sounds like a watch fit for a king, you’d be on the money, as its commissioner and first owner was James VI and I, King of Scotland and England, who commissioned David Ramsay, the first Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, to create three similar (but not identical) pocket watches in the early 1600s. It's also going under the hammer at Bonhams' Historical and Extraordinary Watches auction in London in December.

So let's get down to brass tacks: what is it? This solid silver and brass egg-shaped David Ramsay pocket watch is powered by a movement featuring a pre-balance verge escapement, which was used in essentially all watches and clocks for close to 400 years, with a fusée pulley system to equalise the release of power as the mainspring uncoils. Predating the invention of miniature chains to wrap around the fusée, it uses a catgut cord made of the intestinal fibres of animals (but not cats, despite the name).

The King’s Ramsay reads the time, the day of the week, the month, moon phase, moon date, the zodiac sign, and the ruling planet. This exhaustive list of complications would compete with high-complication wrist and pocket watches today, let alone over 400 years ago, making it easily the most complicated portable timekeeper in existence at the time of its creation.

It’s complicated, but it’s not what you’d call accurate - at least by modern, COSC and METAS certification-informed standards. The Ramsay pocket watch predates John Harrison’s first marine chronometer by over 120 years. Indeed, it doesn’t even have a minute hand. Ramsay’s creation comes from a time period where watches held a more abstract, astrological and cultural role rather than being incredibly accurate timekeepers.

Despite its unlikely survival over the last four centuries, it hasn’t made its way to the 21st century entirely unscathed. It isn’t currently working, primarily because the catgut fusée has snapped. It’s also lost both the subdial inserts for the time readout at the lower portion of the watch and the zodiac subdial above it, as well as the corresponding hands for the time, pointer date, zodiac and month. Given the watch predates common use of transparent dial covers, I’m told it’s quite common for watches from this period to present with missing parts. Bonhams tells me that while remaking these missing components would be “quite straightforward” (as would be servicing it), they’ve made the decision to present the watch as-is, leaving the decision to either restore or preserve the watch up to its next custodian.

Despite its age, the layout of the Ramsay pocket watch is surprisingly similar to modern, highly complicated pocket watches. At what would be 12 o’clock sits the larger of the two subdials and indicates the date, month and zodiac sign. It’s ringed with 31 days of a calendar month and an engraved insert (no longer present) would have sat inside indicating the month and zodiac, with the date marked by an orbiting date hand and the day/zodiac by a centrally-mounted hand.

Working clockwise around the dial, at the 3 o’clock position is the lunar date with a moonphase below, which completes a full cycle in 29.5 days. In these photos, it’s reading ‘28’ days in the lunar cycle, though a frowning moonphase (surprisingly similar in design to moonphases still found on watches today) is engraved on the disc currently out of sight under the dial.

At 6 o’clock, you’ll find the timekeeping subdial and the ruling planetary hour aperture. As previously mentioned, it predates watches having minute hands (as granular, to-the-minute accuracy was yet to be achieved), and features an hour hand fixed to the rotating subdial. The chapter ring indicates hours and half hours, allowing time to still be read with relative accuracy. The planetary hour, an astrological complication, sits offset at 4 o’clock relative to the subdial and assigns every hour of the day to one of seven different planets: Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Sun and Moon - which were still believed to be planets, as England had yet to adopt Copernican heliocentrism as the agreed order of the planets, still believing the Earth to be at the centre of the solar system. Knowing the hour's ruling planet would inform the king and his fortune teller whether it was an auspicious time for given tasks - Jupiter was considered lucky, whilst Venus may have been a good time for love.

The last aperture, at 9 o’clock, indicates the day of the week alongside engravings showing that day's ruling planet and its associated god. In these photographs, it’s reading Mercury (Wednesday), although my favourite engraving is Saturday, featuring the god Saturn, depicted eating his son. It’s a common historical depiction, yet in Roman myth, Saturn devours his sons whole, who stay alive in his stomach. Gérard de Heck, a renowned Flemish engraver who worked with Ramsay on the watch, decided to depict Saturn tearing at the flesh of his son, bearing a striking resemblance to how Francisco Goya depicted the myth in his famous Saturn Devouring His Son, just 210 years before Goya’s incredible painting was created.

In terms of exclusivity, nothing purchasable today comes close to what owning this watch would have represented in its era. No contemporary status symbol like a private jet, private island or superyacht bigger than the last biggest superyacht competes, because in 1613, a watch of this complexity would have afforded its owner two crucial things beyond the prestige of owning it: power and control.

Whilst the pocket watch’s intended function is to tell time, 400 years removed, it’s transcended that original purpose and acts more like a time capsule. It speaks of the time in which it was created through idiosyncratic details like the pre-Copernican astrological complications. It features engravings on the silver band around the midcase representing each of the four countries King James VI and I claimed to rule, far before the invention of the United Kingdom: not England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as they are today, but England (of which Wales was still part at the time), Scotland, Ireland and France. Yes, France. Despite England’s loss in the Hundred Years’ War, King James VI and I still considered himself the King of France, and his watch reflected that.

With this watch in his possession, King James VI and I was able to know the length of his subjects' working days - information they wouldn’t have access to - giving him unprecedented control and power over his subjects' time. Living at a time predating the English scientific revolution, alchemy and astrology were still considered a legitimate scientific pursuit, and the watch gave the king insight into astrological information at a glance - superstition by today’s standards, but an important lever of control in James VI and I’s time.

The rear plate of the movement, outside of which the foliot rotates under a decorative, floral-engraved cover, also features David Ramsay’s signature, who was a fierce Scotsman whose nationality was one of the reasons that this Scottish-born king chose him as his watchmaker. The watch was made in Ramsay’s London workshop, but below Ramsay’s name sits possibly the most evocative origin mark I’ve encountered on a watch: in Latin, “Scotus me Fecit” - “Scotland made me”. Take that, F.P. Journe.

It’s astounding that a timepiece of such complexity and detail was made such a long time ago. Just take the 19mm diameter wheel that tells the day and its associated god. It’s engraved with such precision and detail, but made under conditions totally alien to watchmakers and engravers working today. It was created under candlelight and likely without magnification, yet the level of detail achieved is an extraordinary artistic achievement. The case and dial finishing were achieved with techniques such as fire gilt - cutting edge for the time but, again, wildly antiquated today. The dial is brass, yet was painted with a gold and mercury mixture which was then heated up and evaporated (hopefully not inhaled, as it’s incredibly toxic), allowing just the gold to settle, impregnating the brass with a gilt finish and protecting it from oxidisation.

Incredibly, all three of the watches Ramsay created for King James VI and I have survived, meaning we can compare them. It wasn’t recorded which of the three the King kept for himself (gifting the other two to close associates), yet it’s widely believed he would have kept this example for himself. It’s the most advanced of the three, one of two to feature highly finished ‘Egyptian pillars’ holding the movement plates apart, and the only to feature a caseback aperture and dust cover through which one winds the watch. It also features a unique engraved portrait of King James VI and I on the inside of the dial cover, engraved by Simon De Passe, implying it was intended for the King to keep.

At the risk of repeating myself, the fact that all three have survived for over 400 years is remarkable, especially considering just fourteen Ramsay clocks and watches in total have survived. Many watches from the 17th century have long since returned to dust, yet these three have endured. As of publication, all three also still reside in the United Kingdom, with one in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland, one in the private collection of Dr John Taylor (whose example still runs!), and this example, which has resided in the British Museum on a long-term loan since 1961, and was lent to the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1974, where it was displayed through successive generations of ownership - until now.

The King’s Ramsay is coincidentally coming to market at a time when interest in pocket watches is swelling, which Nick Kenyon recently delved into in our first print edition, Hodinkee Australia & New Zealand Vol. 1. Yet the King’s Ramsay isn’t your garden-variety half-century-old Rolex or Patek Philippe pocket watch. It begs the question: who will buy the King’s Ramsay? That's what was on my mind when I sat down with Jonathan Darracott, Bonhams’ Global Head of Watches, to unpack the nuances of this historical watch and to understand the market for a watch of this extraordinary historical calibre (pun intended).

Jack Shepherdson (JS): What would it have meant in the early 17th century to own a watch like this?

Jonathan Darracott (JD): It's the forefront of technology, the real cutting edge of mechanical prowess. Generally, they would have been owned by the highest echelons of society. They're the only people who could afford it. For the three watches, the archives say The King paid £61. That would have been enough to buy a small village - it was a huge amount of money.

JS: This watch predates King Charles II popularising waistcoats around 1675, leading to pocket watches taking thinner forms to slip into waistcoat pockets, so would King James VI and I have worn this around his neck?

JD: No, not necessarily. It might have been worn on a sash, though it might have been around the neck… It's so small and portable, and it will keep time in any direction: you can have it sitting on its back because the balance wheel, by its nature and by its name, is balanced. That actually comes from an invention that was used in clocks, which is called a foliot, which is a bar with weights on it, going back and forth. But with a foliot, it has to be static because it has weights on it - you move it, and it will go in one direction, whereas a balance was a great advancement in being able to have a portable timepiece.

There are depictions of watches from this period in portraits of important people. It's their way of saying, ‘I'm educated, I'm in touch with modern ideas, I’m enlightened, and I'm rich’. But [in the portraits] nearly none of them are worn; they’re nearly all held in the hand. It would have been quite the well-established status symbol.

JS: For a lot of watch enthusiasts, Abraham-Louis Breguet is as far back as most are aware of, yet Ramsay was around a century earlier. Can you tell us who David Ramsay was and help fill in the gaps in the history of watches from his death to the Breguet era?

JD: David Ramsay was the first royal clockmaker. When he was the royal clockmaker to Charles I, he became the first Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers in London, which was set up during that period. So, he's at the forefront of watchmaking in this country, not of what was called the UK at the time, but of what was simply the British Isles. He was a gunsmith and armourer before that, and he went to France. When King James VI and I made him a royal clockmaker, he called him back from France. This is why we think that there is some French influence in the watch, and believe it was made as an ebauche in France, and subsequently finished and cased in London. From Ramsay, then you get Edward East, the next generation of very good watchmakers, and then you start to move into Joseph Nib and Thomas Tompion, who people will have heard of.

But then at Tompion’s time is when you got the seismic change of accuracy in watches, because Robert Hooke proposed the idea that the effort you put into a spring is what you get out of it, at which point he realised this could be used in watches for timekeeping. Thomas Tompion did exactly that - he changed everything, and watches became accurate. Then they became things that people could actually rely on to chart stars in a more accurate way and keep time. From Tompion, it moved on to John Arnold and Breguet, and then you start to get into the more familiar territory for watch collectors. It's not a forgotten age, but because there are so few pieces that survive from this period, it’s quite an esoteric collecting area.

JS: As I understand it, Ramsay had a tumultuous life - he ended up in prison at one point?

JD: Yes, debtors’ prison. He wasn't paid, so he didn’t go to prison because he was a reprobate - he wasn't paid by The Crown, and he actually had to sue The Crown to get money. Unfortunately, it was quite common that The Crown didn't pay all of its debts all the time. He was still very well respected, but yes, he did go to debtors’ prison.

JS: The Ramsay watch doesn’t work anymore, given it's missing some hands and the gut string is broken. Are there watches from this period that still do work, and how would you go about servicing a watch like this?

JD: The one in Dr John Taylor's collection, who’s very keen on having his pieces working, actually works. It really wouldn't take much work to get [this watch] going. Watches are incredibly resilient: you very often get watches from this period that do run, and the only two reasons why this one doesn’t work are that the spring is completely and utterly disintegrated by now, and the catgut is disconnected. But everything's there; it wouldn't take much to get it running.

JS: Given there aren't many watches from this period that have survived intact, how did you authenticate this watch before bringing it to market?

JD: Experience. It’s learning what it should look like, what it should be. The first one that I saw of these was Dr John Taylor’s, and because of its provenance, we knew that it was correct. Once you get one that is correct, you can use it as a touchpoint for all the others. There are certain things that indicate whether it's correct or not. Faking these watches did happen, though they haven't been very well done because they were faked fifty, sixty, or a hundred years ago.

JS: The Victorians famously had a bit of a thing for making poorly-done replicas...

JD: One hundred per cent, and they were not very diligent about it. There are technical things that you look at and can tell if it’s not made the right way or not engraved the right way. You get a feel for it.

JS: After King James VI and I, do we know who owned the King’s Ramsay?

JD: The watch was presented by Queen Anne to her Maid-of-Honour, Lady Elizabeth Russell, who married Peter Bowlby of County Durham, around 1750. It subsequently passed through successive generations of the family to its present owner, and it was placed on a long-term loan to the British Museum in 1961. It was then lent to the V&A in 1974, where it’s remained until now. It’s in such fantastic condition, suggesting that it's been kept in private collections, and the fact that it's lost its parts means that it has never been to a dealer, because they would have replicated dials and hands to make it look as complete as possible.

JS: Do you think it should be restored to a working condition or do you think it should be preserved the way it is?

JD: It's a very interesting question. I am very much in two minds about it. I think watches are alive - they’re not static objects, they’re meant to run. So my gut is saying I'd love to see it running, but I love the fact that it is all original. That's important.

JS: What is the market for a watch like this today and do collectors of watches of this vintage overlap with contemporary watch collectors?

JD: People keep asking me, ‘Who are we going to sell this to?’, and I really couldn't tell you, because it crosses so many boundaries. It appeals to trophy collectors buying the best of the best that they can get. It appeals to royalists. It appeals to collectors who are into early watches with horological collections, and you [also] get people who want to have the bragging rights to own something like this. And that's kind of where the crossover comes with modern collecting. The owner gets to say, ‘Not only do I have this Roger Smith, but I've also got his English heritage in one of the earliest watches made for a king’. So who’s going to buy it? I really don't know. That’s what makes it so interesting; that it could appeal to such a wide range of collectors.

JS: Is there a subset of horological collectors who specialise in watches of this period, the same way as there are, for example, Rolex Daytona specialists?

JD: Yes, absolutely. Early horological collections do exist, and the people who own some of the finest early collections also collect wristwatches too.

JS: Do people who collect watches like this wear them?

JD: No. These are museum pieces; they’re cabinet pieces. However, I know one collector who does actually put them in his pocket to pull out. He comes to auctions and goes, ‘Have you seen this?’

JS: The last example to sell was bought by Dr John Taylor in December 2015 at Sotheby’s for £989,000, so how do you go about placing an estimate on this example?

JD: There's an old adage in pricing things: once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, three times is a market. So the fact that one sold for a million means nothing, because there could have been two people bidding who just couldn’t let it go. The first time that a Ramsay made for King James VI and I sold, it made approximately £50,000, so the difference there is too big. The historical importance is what pushed our estimate to £250,000-350,000. Had this watch not had the historical significance, we’d only value it around £30,000-40,000.

JS: Pocket watches are enjoying a resurgence right now. Do you think that newfound interest will have an impact on the sale of the King’s Ramsay?

JD: Yes, definitely, because the world is more open to the idea of pocket watches being collectors’ pieces, being examples of wonderful horology. One of the things that has really ticked a lot of modern collectors' boxes is the fact that you can get a perpetual calendar, minute-repeating Patek Philippe for £100,000 to £150,000. Put it in a wristwatch, and it's a million. Collectors have realised they can have that art, that horological masterpiece, and it’s more accessible because there are probably more [pocket watches than wristwatches].

JS: And in the example of a Patek Philippe, it’s likely that Patek would have valued their pocket watches more highly, finishing them to a higher standard than the wristwatches.

JD: And it’s handmade, literally handmade in that period. It's much more visceral.

JS: Are you seeing your buyers broaden their education and interests beyond just wristwatches to pocket watches? Or, conversely, are pocket watch collectors looking at independents such as Philippe Dufour and Roger Smith?

JD: Yes, and I think you've hit exactly the two points. When you start collecting watches, you move away from the big manufacturers, and you move to the independents because you see that they’re made in a particular way. That's the same way the pocket watches were made, at which point you look at pocket watches, and it starts to open your eyes. The other side is the same. If you're collecting pocket watches and you see the independents, they become more interesting to you because they're made in similar ways. Before, when you had that real polarisation between modern manufacturers and old pocket watches, there wasn't this in-between of independents. That has been the bridging point between the two.

JS: Do you think this sales could be that tipping point where pocket watches are regarded more highly?

JD: I hope so. Also in this sale is a Charles Frodsham tourbillon likely made between 1890 and 1910, which is one of the pinnacles of tourbillon making. It's probably better than any tourbillons that are being produced today in the way it's finished. I think this could be a very interesting, seminal sale.

JS: So, is 2026 the year of the pocket watch?

JD: Funny, you’re the second person to ask me that today…

This David Ramsay pocket watch, made for King James VI and I, is headlining the Historical and Extraordinary Watches auction at Bonhams London on December 3, with an estimate of £250,000-350,000 (~A$477,000-573,000). Find out more here.