18ct yellow gold Dent, minute repeating perpetual calendar pocketwatch. Made 1883

Information

• Brand: Dent 
• Made: 1883
• Model: Minute repeater
• Reference: -
• Calibre: -
• Movement: Manual
• Material: 18ct yellow gold
• Features/complications: Perpetual calendar 
• Dial: Enamel dial featuring an outer minute track with roman numerals, subdials at 12 o'clock showing months & leap year indication, moonphase at 6 o'clock, date at 3 o'clock with day at 9 o'clock 
• Case Dimensions: 50mm
• Bracelet/Strap: N/A
• Accessories: N/A
• SKU: 2772

Essay

Edward John Dent was a passionate and esteemed creator of some of the finest clocks and watches, with Royal Warrants across the globe and creator of one of the world’s most famous clocks, ‘Big Ben’ and yet began his career purely by coincidence.

It started when the age of 14 Dent was an apprentice candle maker to his grandfather. The young Dent had bought his grandfather a watch as a gift; probably second hand, however it barely kept time and so it was up to Dent to repair it. Spending hours poring over this watch no doubt began Dent’s appetite for horology. Meanwhile, the terms of his apprenticeship contract meant he had to find residence and thankfully his cousin was willing to have him. His cousin was Richard Rippon, an expert watchmaker who helped Dent become more and more interested in watch repair and less and less interested in candle making - so much so that Dent’s grandfather agreed to transfer his remaining seven years as apprentice to the watchmaker Edward Gaudin.

Dent established his own company ten years later in 1814, and developed a reputation as a builder of accurate chronometers. One of his chronometers won the First Premium Award in the 1829 Greenwich Trials. The Royal Navy equipped themselves with Dent’s chronometers.

Dent’s chronometers accompanied some of the 19th century’s most influential explorers. Robert FitzRoy took Dent chronometer no. 633 aboard HMS Beagle in 1831 the voyage that eventually led to the publication of The Origin of the Species – Darwin’s revolutionary theory of evolution.