Shaw Watch Collection
The late Honorary Professor Leonard Shaw bequeathed a stunning collection of antique watches to his adopted island home in 2012
The 46 watches range in date from the late seventeenth through to the early twentieth century. They represent a wide range of decorative styles, mechanism types and functionality. Some are by famous makers such as Breguet but they are all, without exception, exquisite works of craftsmanship and artistic excellence.
Some of the watches are musical and we have published simple slideshows accompanied by their sounds on YouTube. Four of the watches are automata and we have published video clips in the same place. Three have animated decorative scenes, like the elaborate example once owned by King Farouk of Egypt. The other automaton is an unusual and whimsical device which abandons the normal dial for a cast metal figure with movable arms which point to the time when the plunger is pressed.
