Portable Timekeepers

QUESTION: My grandfather left me the pocket watch he had received on his retirement. The watch is a Waltham. It still works but I’m not sure if it keeps good time. I already have a wristwatch and a smartphone, so I really don’t need this pocket watch. Is this watch collectible? If so, would it be a good idea for me to start a collection of them?

ANSWER: Your grandfather probably didn’t use his pocket watch very much. Businesses commonly gave gold pocket watches to members of their management staff upon their retirement. Before you do anything, you should take his watch to a watchmaker to have it checked and cleaned. Chances are, the watch is in like-new condition.

Pocket watches date back to the early 16th century. German locksmith Peter Henlein from Nuremburg invented the first to portable timepiece. Henlein also invented a spring-driven mechanism which made the personal timepiece possible. Spiral springs could be wound and uncoiled to move the hour hand of the clock. However, this mechanism was highly inaccurate because coiled springs don't unwind at a constant speed. But having a timepiece people could or wear on a chain, even if it was off by an hour or so, was a great improvement.

However, Henlein’s portable clock had a heavy drum-shaped brass box-like case, typically four or five inches wide and abut three inches thick, take up too much space in a person’s pouch. Unfortunately, pickpockets could easily snatch a pouch worn outside a person's clothing, so cautious people began to hide their pocket clock inside their clothing. This proved to be uncomfortable, so people began wearing their clocks on a  chain around their necks.

By 1653, tailors had begun sewing small pockets called "fobs," from the German word fuppe, into the waistband of breeches, in which to carry a watch, money, or other valuables. The fob, which means to cheat or misrepresent, was meant to prevent any  thief from easily removing a person's valuables.

By the end of the 18th Century, improvements in watchmaking resulted in watches that were thinner and more rounded. Tailors sewed smaller fob pockets into vests so that people could carry a watch attached to a chain.

Early pocket watches only had an hour hand. The dial wasn’t covered with glass, but usually had a hinged brass cover, often decoratively pierced with grillwork so the time could be read without opening. Watchmakers created movements of iron or steel, held together with tapered pins and wedges, until after 1550 when screws appeared. Many of the movements included striking or alarm mechanisms. The shape of the watches soon evolved into a rounded form called Nuremberg eggs. And even later in the century a trend for unusually shaped watches, shaped like books, animals, fruit, stars, flowers, insects, crosses, and even skulls, became popular. Beginning in 1610, a glass crystal covered the watch dials. To wind and set the watch, the owner opened the back and fitted a key to a square arbor and turned it.

The first solution to uneven unwinding came when watchmakers realized the spring uncoiled at a more constant pace when it wasn’t wound tightly. Watchmakers invented several ways to prevent this. The stackfreed was a cam with an additional spring that compensated for the main spring's changes in speed, and the fusee was a stop that prevented the spring from being wound too tightly. It was usually made of stiff hog bristle.

In 1675 several watchmakers discovered that a spiral spring attached to the balance greatly increased accuracy. Suddenly, watches reflected the correct time within minutes rather than being off by close to an hour. Until this time, watches had to be wound twice a day. A fourth wheel added to the movement decreased the winding required to once per day. Less than 100 years later, watchmakers added a hand to measure seconds. As years passed, people wanted calendars to mark the day, date and month, phases of the moon, as well as alarms, chimes and music.

Early pocket watches had no covering to protect the face or the hour hand. In the 18th century English watchmakers began creating gold and silver cases to slide the watch into to protect it. Watchmakers added glass crystals to protect the dial around 1610 but because they were translucent, people still had to remove them to read the time.

English watchmakers added jewels, usually second-rate gemstones in the 18th century as bearings in the watches to prevent friction and wear between metal parts. However, watchmakers from other countries didn’t adopt "jeweling" for nearly another 100 years. Today, the number of jewels a watch has is a sign of its quality and durability. Most pocket watches have between 7 and 21 jewels.

Pocket watches came in either of two types of cases—hunting or open-faced. Hunting case watches, popular during the 19th century, have a spring-hinged circular metal lid or cover, that closes over the watch-dial and crystal, protecting them from dust, scratches and other damage or debris, and opens when the owner pushes a button. Most antique hunter-case watches have the lid-hinges at the 9 o'clock position and the stem and crown of the watch at the 3 o'clock position. By 1900, the open face watch took over and hunting case watches became less commonplace. Watchmakers made cases of silver and gold. Many were gold-filled, with two thin sheets of gold on the outside around a thicker layer of brass. They also used a variety of silver-colored material, with names like silveride, usually nickel based.

Waltham pocket watches are very collectible. But because watch designs changed often in the early years, they sometimes made only a few of some models. A good example is the Waltham Model Appleton, a size 20, 18-carat gold watch with a rear key wind that had sold for $10,000. Because so many were made and in such variety, collectors can buy a pocket watch in running condition from as low as $100 US up to the $1000s if you want. Since most pocket watches don’t appreciate much in value, it’s possible to start a modest collection on a limited budget.

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The Egg and I

QUESTION: On a trip to England several years ago, I discovered the joys of eating a soft-boiled egg for breakfast. Of course, the waitress served my egg standing straight up in an egg cup. I became fascinated by these unique little pedestals and purchased several to take home as souvenirs of my trip. After I got home, I started to notice them at flea markets, so I began to buy more. Now I have over 50 of them. How did the egg cup come to be? Who invented it? And why isn’t it used widely here in the U.S.?

ANSWER: While Americans aren’t as keen on eating soft-boiled eggs as their British counterparts, egg cups have won the hearts of many collectors.

Egg cups come in many types, styles and categories, from delicate hand-painted works of art to outrageous caricatures made to represent everything from members of the British royal family to current cartoon characters. Manufacturers use many different materials to produce egg cups, including glass, wood, stone and even plastic.

Egg cups have been used in British cultures for centuries. Though people commonly refer to them as egg cups, they can also be called egg holders. Either way, they’re shallow dishes designed to hold a boiled egg in its shell. Wealthy persons living along the East Coast of the U.S. used them until the mid-1960s, essentially imitating the breakfast habits of their British cousins. But their use never really caught on with the middle class, who instead discovered prepared foods.

Historians believe the Romans were using egg cups before 79 A.D. Clearly, eggs cooked in the shell can be unmanageable without a small receptacle to hold them in place.

The most common egg cup, designed to hold a single egg, is called a single. Less common are doubles. Doubles have a cup on either end, a small one to hold a single egg, or if user turns up the larger end, it will hold one or more eggs out of the shell or the egg of a larger bird such as a duck or goose. There are also bucket egg cups, which  have no pedestal, “Hoop” egg cups resemble napkin rings and can be “straight” or “waisted.” Americans often mistaken them for wide napkin rings. Side-by-side doubles and flat oval egg cups, designed to hold an egg lying on its side and used more often for hard boiled eggs, can be more difficult to find. Egg cups can also come in sets of four to as many as a dozen, on a single matching serving piece for family use. Some egg cups include a spoon and/or a small scissors, often referred to as an egg decapitator.

In Britain and many European countries egg cups are still a standard part of a place setting of china. Since they’re still used in the average home, the easier to find. And since they’re used widely, egg cups from most of the major makers, such as Goebel in Germany, Carlton Ware, Staffordshire, Adams and numerous others in England, are readily available.

Figural egg cups, featuring cartoon character, such as Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, and Tweety Bird, are popular with collectors. Other categories include commemorative, political, advertising, holiday, caricatures, transportation, children's, and black memorabilia.  Any of these categories may be made from glass, porcelain, pottery or ceramic. Metals used for egg cup production include gold, silver, copper and pewter. Stone such as marble and many varieties of woods also may be used to produce egg cups.

Egg cup collectors, called pocillovists, must do their homework in order to know what’s available and to watch out for misrepresentation. Because egg cups aren’t an everyday item in the American household, many sellers who acquire eggcups from estates or family sales don’t know what they have and will misrepresent them as something else such as an open salt cellar. Sellers will occasionally misrepresent a common egg cup as something more rare. Serious egg cup collectors agree that chips, cracks, or other flaws are not acceptable.

The Internet has made egg tugs readily available to collectors and is responsible to some degree for the blossoming interest in the United States. However, prices tend to go up and down. Common egg cups can sell for less than a dollar while rarer ones can cost in the hundreds of dollars.

What the Devil is That?

QUESTION: My mother left me her collection of deviled egg plates. While I’ve eaten deviled eggs at parties and picnics, most of time they’re served on a regular dinner plate or in a plastic Tupper Ware-like container. How did these plates originate? And are they still collectible today?

ANSWER: Deviled egg plates are a throwback to the 1940s and 1950s when hostesses entertained in a more formal manner. It was also not long ago when eggs were a desirable food, especially when they were served deviled on ornate plates made especially for that purpose. Happy housewives back then didn’t have a guilt trip about whether her gourmet delights would clog the arteries of her dinner guests.

What the devil are deviled eggs? Various dictionaries and food encyclopedias trace the history of the devil egg to 18th century England. People began using the term “deviled”  to describe kidneys and other meats served hotly spiced. Most sources accepted the comparison to heat and the fires of Hell, resulting in the adjective deviled.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, hostesses served deviled eggs at all sorts of occasions, from finger food at outdoor barbecues and picnics to appetizers at fancy sit-down dinners. Down South, no proper home was without an deviled egg plate. A North Carolina businessman, who grew up in the 1950s, remembers his mother always putting out two platters of deviled eggs when receiving guests. And deviled eggs became a standard dish at church suppers.

Though egg plates came in a wide variety of shapes and designs, all shared a common feature—a series of half-egg shaped depressions in which deviled eggs could be nested. But despite a centuries-old history of the deviled egg, most museums don’t have any pre-19th century egg plates in their collections. The decorative egg plate seems to have peaked in the 1950s and 1960s.

Deviled eggs reached new heights with proliferation of cocktail parties from the 1940s to 1960s producing an explosion of decorative egg plates during that period. The 1970s, however, marked the end of egg plate’s hey day. 

One of the most popular motifs for egg plates were hens, roosters and chicks. There were trays decorated with hens, shaped like hens or with figural hens, salt and pepper shakers. Small oval plates with matching hen shakers can easily be found in the ochre and avocado colors of the 1970s. Manufacturers also produced plates of other designs with matching salt and pepper shakers. A plate with deviled egg depressions plus two small, flat rimmed depressions is likely one that’s missing its shaker mates.

Multipurpose plates often have space for dips, relishes or other finger food in addition to the deviled eggs. Creative hostesses often place a salad, salad dressing, or relishes in the center of these plates, decorated with a hand-painted hen and rooster decorated egg plate.

Collectors often follow a decorating theme, gathering only those plates embellished with hens or flowers or plates with matching` shakers, etc. Others are more eclectic, preferring highly decorative or unusually shaped egg plates. Flowers, such as roses and violets, matching the china patterns and tastes of the times were quite popular, as were those with fruit or vegetable themes to correspond with kitchen and dining decor. The most commonly found glass egg plates are the ones of blue and green Carnival glass, made by the Indiana Glass Company.

People often confuse egg plates with oyster plates. Deviled egg plates have perfectly oval depressions with smooth edges while oyster plates have jagged edges and slightly kidney shaped depressions. The majority of egg plates are made of heavier china or stoneware, while oyster plates are more commonly found in fine porcelain and majolica. Generally, oyster plates are older, frequently dating from the mid- to late 19th century.

Prices for egg plates vary widely. Fine china and elegant glass egg plates seem to command the highest prices, the market apparently being driven more by the porcelain or glass pattern collectors than egg plate devotees. Many egg plates can be found for under $30, but values for ornate examples or those made by elegant glass or well-known pottery manufacturers can be much higher.