Voyage Through Time

Book excerpt: The Masis Collection is one of the most comprehensive privately owned assemblages of pocket watches in the world. Focusing on the watch as a work of art, it encompasses over four hundred years of the watchmaker's, enameller's and goldsmith's craft. This lavishly illustrated book takes the reader not only on a journey through the development of the mechanical watch, but for the first time, shows the artistic progression of watch case decoration in the fashionable styles that walked hand in hand with wider European artistic movements. Beginning with some of the earliest surviving portable timepieces, the Masis Collection includes watches that can be considered among the greatest European miniature works of art to ever be created.The collection is particularly rich in examples of gloriously painted Geneva enamels, particularly those of the Huaud family working in the baroque period. Its strength also lies in the breathtakingly beautiful enamel watches made for export to China and Turkey in the early years of the 19th century. This book aims to inform the reader not only of the richness and diversity of the Masis collection itself but to adequately display some of the watchmaking masterpieces that have enthralled their owners down the centuries.