Loading
Dominic Gugeri, Watchmaker and Jeweller of Boston
Very little is known about Dominic Gugeri, and this account is limited to what the surviving sources actually show.
Dominic Gugeri kept a business on the Market Place in Boston, a port and market town on the east coast of Lincolnshire. He worked as a watchmaker, silversmith and jeweller. His name survives in three kinds of source: Edwin Banfield's reference work on British barometer makers, the signatures on his surviving work, and the catalogues of later dealers and auction houses.
Banfield gives him a single line: "GUGERI, Dominic. w1835–42. e1815–45. Clock & watch M, silversmith & jeweller. Market Place, Boston." In Banfield's notation this means Gugeri is documented at work in Boston between 1835 and 1842. His working life as a whole is estimated at roughly 1815–1845. Barometers do not appear in the description of his trade, which names clocks, watches, silver and jewellery. Yet it was his barometers, signed with his own name and that of his town, that made him known to collectors.
One of them is a mercury wheel barometer dated to around 1820 and offered by the dealer FJ & RD Story Antique Clocks. Its case is figured mahogany with an architectural pediment and ebony and boxwood stringing along the outer edge. The 8-inch silvered brass dial reads from 28 to 31 inches, with weather indications and fine foliate engraving at the centre. It is signed "Dom Gugeri, Boston, Warranted". The instrument stands about 38 inches high, with a spirit thermometer above the dial.
A second barometer is signed "D. Gugeri of Boston". It has a mahogany case and a 10-inch silvered dial in a cast brass bezel under convex glass. It also has a mercury thermometer and an ivory knob for the set hand, and the spirit level is engraved with the maker's name. The seller dated it to around 1840. Both signatures, "Dom Gugeri" and "D. Gugeri", are abbreviations of the same name, and both name Boston.
A surviving watch confirms the watchmaking trade recorded by Banfield. The Louth auction house John Taylors offered a lot of three pocket watches, two of them silver, one signed "Dominic Gugeri Boston". The auctioneers dated it to 1810–1850 and noted that part of the case was missing.
Together these sources give a limited but definite picture. Gugeri was a provincial craftsman trading on the main square of a market town in south-east Lincolnshire. He sold watches, silver and jewellery, and supplied barometers under his own signature. His dates of birth and death, his birthplace, his family and his fate after the early 1840s are not recorded in the sources available.
