- Sep 23, 2001
- 0
- 1
- 0
Bookreview
Howard Pocket Watches from a German Perspective
Die Taschenuhren der E. Howard & Co. By Chistian von Buchau. Published 2009 by Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt (Germany). ISBN 978 3 8370 8039 1. Paperback, 224 pages, 21 cm. 153 illustrations, mostly in color. Available at www.bod.de/index.php?id=296&objk_id=275620 for Euro 50 plus postage.
Over the years a fair amount of information has been published on E. Howard pocketwatches, including the NAWCC 2005 publication of the Proceedings of the 2002 NAWCC Symposium in Boxboro, MA, which included Clint Geller’s excellent ‘A Study of E.Howard Watchmaking Innovations 1858-1875’ [Still in print, available at www.nawcc.org].
So why would an American Howard collector be interested in a new German language publication covering much of the same subject matter? Because Howard fans often are fanatics, and care deeply about the minute differences in the many models of pocketwatches produced by Howard.
The German collector Christian von Buchau in his text covers much familiar ground of Howard’s corporate history. He classifies his countless examples into 17 different types of movements, and pages 40 to 98 give numerous movement illustrations of each type. While he provides no source information for his many movement images, I suspect that many of the examples shown have not been previously published, and may have been in Europe for a long time, and therefore may not be familiar to the American Howard community. In addition, following the text portion of the book there is a 52 page section called ‘Gallery’, consisting of good full page color illustrations of 26 Howard pocketwatches presumably from the authors’ own collection, each shown dial-side and movement-side. That documentation alone may make it worthwhile to get the book, even if you can not follow the text.
Fortunat Mueller-Maerki (Suusex, NJ)
February 26, 2010
Howard Pocket Watches from a German Perspective
Die Taschenuhren der E. Howard & Co. By Chistian von Buchau. Published 2009 by Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt (Germany). ISBN 978 3 8370 8039 1. Paperback, 224 pages, 21 cm. 153 illustrations, mostly in color. Available at www.bod.de/index.php?id=296&objk_id=275620 for Euro 50 plus postage.
Over the years a fair amount of information has been published on E. Howard pocketwatches, including the NAWCC 2005 publication of the Proceedings of the 2002 NAWCC Symposium in Boxboro, MA, which included Clint Geller’s excellent ‘A Study of E.Howard Watchmaking Innovations 1858-1875’ [Still in print, available at www.nawcc.org].
So why would an American Howard collector be interested in a new German language publication covering much of the same subject matter? Because Howard fans often are fanatics, and care deeply about the minute differences in the many models of pocketwatches produced by Howard.
The German collector Christian von Buchau in his text covers much familiar ground of Howard’s corporate history. He classifies his countless examples into 17 different types of movements, and pages 40 to 98 give numerous movement illustrations of each type. While he provides no source information for his many movement images, I suspect that many of the examples shown have not been previously published, and may have been in Europe for a long time, and therefore may not be familiar to the American Howard community. In addition, following the text portion of the book there is a 52 page section called ‘Gallery’, consisting of good full page color illustrations of 26 Howard pocketwatches presumably from the authors’ own collection, each shown dial-side and movement-side. That documentation alone may make it worthwhile to get the book, even if you can not follow the text.
Fortunat Mueller-Maerki (Suusex, NJ)
February 26, 2010
Attachments
Last edited by a moderator:
