Oval Watch Case with a Wrestling Match, from a Series of Six Designs for Watch Cases

Oval Watch Case with a Wrestling Match, from a Series of Six Designs for Watch Cases

Antoine Jacquard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Antoine Jacquard was active as a metalsmith in Potiers in the first half of the seventeenth century. He appears to have published his designs in print with some regularity throughout his career. They now form the only record of the kinds of objects he would have produced in his workshop. Their subjects range from designs for lock plates, sword hilts, and pommels, to finely-wrought watch cases such as these. This series consists of six sheets, each showing an oval watch case at center, either representing the clock face, or the verso of the case. At the top and bottom of the print decorative friezes are depicted which represent options for the decoration of the sides of the watch case. The prints have been partially executed in the blackwork technique, which may indicated that the watch cases were meant to be enameled, as was the fashion in the early seventeenth century. The prints are not bound, but the original holes where the series would have been tied together with a piece of rope are preserved in the generous margins of the prints.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Oval Watch Case with a Wrestling Match, from a Series of Six Designs for Watch CasesOval Watch Case with a Wrestling Match, from a Series of Six Designs for Watch CasesOval Watch Case with a Wrestling Match, from a Series of Six Designs for Watch CasesOval Watch Case with a Wrestling Match, from a Series of Six Designs for Watch CasesOval Watch Case with a Wrestling Match, from a Series of Six Designs for Watch Cases

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.