Pair-case watch

Adam Roumeau

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nicholas II and his brother, Henry Massy, were members of a distinguished family of Huguenot clockmakers. Their family emigrated from Blois to London, where Henry was born. After 1700 Nicholas II went to The Hague, where he apparently cooperated with his London based brother in supplying gold watches for Continental patrons. Adam Roumeau, a goldsmith from Marseille, was made free of the London Goldsmiths’ Company a few months after receiving his letters of naturalization in 1687. Both watchmakers and goldsmiths were part of the diaspora of French Protestants in the years leading up to and following Louis XIV’s Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The monogram on the outer case has not been identified.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art