Loading
D334-26 · Miscellaneous
c.1890
Object Overview
This is a Hunter case pocket thermometer, made around 1890 by the firm of Carl Emil Rose, Thermometer-, Barometer- & Glasinstrumentenfabrik in Mellenbach, Thuringia. It is an unusual pocket instrument: it takes the form of a hunter pocket watch, complete with hinged lid, red fabric lining and suspension ring, but instead of a watch movement it houses a mercury thermometer and a compass. The model is illustrated as No. 479 on Plate 14 of the firm's illustrated catalogue of 1895, the Musterbuch von Carl Emil Rose in Mellenbach (Thüringen).
The small round case, convex on both front and back, is made of nickel-plated brass. The back is solid, plain and polished. The front is formed by a hinged lid that bears an engraving. The pendant is topped with a knurled collar and has a push-button at its apex; pressing it releases the lid and reveals the dial. A swivelling bow is fitted to the pendant, by which the thermometer was hung from a chain. The inside of the lid is lined with red fabric, and the lining has a cut-out for the catch at the edge opposite the hinge.
brass, glass, mercury, nickel-plated brass
The most interesting detail of the case is the engraving on the lid. It shows a strap with a buckle, closed into a ring. The holes for the buckle tongue are marked with dots, and the cross-hatched ends of the strap meet at a rectangular buckle at the bottom. It is most likely a stylised emblem of the Order of the Garter, though without the motto "Honi soit qui mal y pense" that usually runs around the strap. The buckled garter motif was widespread in the decorative arts of the second half of the nineteenth century, and for manufacturers working for the British market it also served as a recognisable nod to "English" taste. The French firm of Guilbert & Cie, for example, a barometer maker of the mid-nineteenth century, had a registered trademark showing an identical image of the Garter with the company's initials.
This ornament was one of the standard finishes the factory applied to its hunter-cased thermometers. It could serve as a decorative cartouche for the owner's monogram.
Beneath the lid, set in a low bezel, is an ebonite dial printed in white with a thermometric scale in degrees Fahrenheit, from 0 to 120 °F, finely divided and numbered every 20 degrees. At the bottom, between the beginning and end of the scale, is the letter "F". A horseshoe-shaped mercury thermometer with a spherical bulb follows the scale in an arc. The tube leaves the bulb at the lower left of the dial, by the zero mark, runs clockwise around the centre and ends at the lower right, by the 120 mark. Two small metal clips hold it to the dial. The choice of the Fahrenheit scale is telling: it was not used in Germany, where the Réaumur and Celsius scales were current, but it was the standard in Britain and the United States. The instrument was therefore intended for export to English-speaking customers. This fits well with the fact that in the 1890s the Rose firm advertised its products in English and French in the Leuchs export directory.
In the centre of the dial, inside the horseshoe of the thermometer, sits a compass in a brass case. It is covered by a flat bevelled mineral glass. The blued-steel needle is mounted on a central pivot with a brass cap. The silvered compass dial, engraved with radiating lines, is marked with the eight principal points of the compass.
This object is a characteristic example of the Thuringian "fancy goods" in glass and metal for which the small factory in the Schwarza valley advertised in Kosmos, the Nuremberg journal for jewellers and watchmakers. The village workshop fitted two instruments into a case indistinguishable from a watch — a thermometer with a scale for English-speaking buyers, and a compass — and decorated the back with an emblem alluding to England's most famous order of chivalry. The exact correspondence of this example to model No. 479 in the 1895 catalogue allows it to be attributed with confidence to the firm of Carl Emil Rose, which for instruments of this kind is the exception rather than the rule. A pocket thermometer with compass of the same type is held in the collection of the Science Museum Group in London. There it is described as the work of an unknown European maker and dated 1900–1982. Its lid is engraved not with a garter but with a shield on a patterned ground, the finish of models No. 480 and No. 482 on the same plate of the Rose catalogue. The Mellenbach Musterbuch points to a probable maker of such instruments and shows that they were already being produced in the last decade of the nineteenth century.