Antique and Vintage Clocks and Watches.
In a pre-Industrial society clocks were an expensive luxury that most people didn't need, thus they were seen as status symbols and often highly decorated and elaborate. With the birth of the Industrial Age and shift work it became more important for the working classes to have access to accurate methods of determining time. It was the mass production techniques of the Industrial Revolution that made new clocks and pocket watches available for the ordinary man. However it was the Railways that standardised time across the country, before the advent of the Railways different regions of the country had different times, so 12.00pm in Liverpool would be a different time to 12.00pm in Bristol! The creation of nation wide time tables for the trains meant that time had to standardised throughout the country. Before the 1920's and 30's pocket watches were by far the most common form of personal timepiece, this changed when major wrist watch manufacturers began paying Hollywood Stars to wear wrist watches on and off screen, and you thought product placement was a recent phenomena. Wrist watches became the norm for personal timepieces and they continue to be so today, although they too are evolving with new technology and added functions.
Antique and Vintage Clocks, Watches and Timepieces (a Timepiece is a clock without a striking mechanism) are highly collectible and cover a vast array of types, styles and budgets. Here at Top Banana we have specialist dealers in wristwatches and carriage clocks, with such well known brands such as Cartier, Rotary and Zenith being represented amongst the wristwatches. Whilst amongst other French and American Carriage Clocks we have a late 19th Century French Petite Sonnerie Carriage Clock by Margaine and a late 19th Century Repeating Carriage Clock by Henri Jacot complete with it's original Morocco leather traveling case. Our other dealers also have examples of various other forms of watches and clocks, including pocket watches, mantle clocks and wall clocks.
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