Lot 571

Johann Heinrich Kessels, Altona, Hamburg, Movement No. 1319, 125 x 125 x 125 mm, circa 1840
An exquisite, rare, small ship's chronometer
Case: mahogany box, inlaid brass signature shield, with slide lid and glass, case key, brass gimbals and bowl, two-body. Dial: silvered, signed, numbered, radial Roman hours and Arabic minutes, auxiliary seconds at "12", blued Breguet hands. Movm.: brass movement, diameter 49 mm, polished, moulded pillars, chain/fusee, spring detent escapement, bimetallic chronometer balance with 4 screws and 4 adjusting nuts, freesprung blued helical balance spring, chatoned diamond endstone on balance.
Johann Heinrich Kessels
Kessels was born May 15, 1781 in Maastricht in Holland and died of cholera on July 15, 1849 in Claverham near Bristol. He was one of the most famous if not the most famous early chronometer makers working in Germany. While Altona was under Danish administration at the time, it was generally considered to be a German city and literature refers to Kessels as a German maker. After stays in London and Kopenhagen he worked with Abraham Louis Breguet in London and settled finally in Altona, where he opened his own workshop. The famous chronometer maker Winnerl of Paris - one of the teachers of Ferdinand Adolf Lange - worked with Kessels in Altona for a while. He quickly gained fame as a chronometer maker for the Danish navy. Kessels created marine chronometers, pocket chronometers and astronomical pendulum clocks.

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