The working life of Museum of London

In my quest to find out more about our slightly mysterious ‘fausse montre’ (fake watch) chatelaine/equipage, I pinned all my hopes on its fob seal. In keeping with the rather cheap nature of the watch, the seal is set with coloured glass, rather than a gemstone, which made it all the harder to make out the animal it seemed to depict.

Fiddling with our camera’s macro setting and blowing up the resulting image didn’t really help. So I set out to find a partner in crime, who emerged in the person of Hannah Power, one of our Applied Arts conservators. She had already cleaned the watch and thought it would be relatively easy to take an impression without any harm to the object. That’s where the dentist putty came in.

I’m quite sure you could use other brands, but don’t take my word for it, I’m not a conservator. I believe Hannah chose this particular one because it sets pretty fast. Below are the different stages: spreading the two components onto a smooth surface, vigorous mixing, careful application and … the reveal. (In case you are wondering, Hannah doesn’t always walk around with a high-viz vest over her lab coat, but we were right in the middle of installing our new galleries and if you found a clean-ish vest you held onto it.)

As I had began to suspect, the impression showed a pelican. ‘Doesn’t look like a pelican to me’, you might say, and yes, there is no pouch. The following is not for the faint-hearted. In medieval Europe it was believed that pelicans had a special way of coping with a food shortage: they pricked their breast until they drew blood, which they used to feed their young. This mistaken belief apparently had something to do with the fact that pelicans press their bill into their chest to empty the aforementioned pouch. Pelicans became one of the prime emblems of self-sacrifice (and also of the Passion of Christ), which Queen Elizabeth I found too hard to resist.

Pelicans were, and are still, used in coat-of-arms where they are usually shown in two versions: alone, in which case connoisseurs of heraldry speak of ‘a pelican vulning herself’, or with their young (usually in a nest), which is called ‘a pelican in her piety’. It is the last version that seems to be depicted on our seal.

The use of emblems in embroidery or for jewellery became particularly popular after the publication the Emblemata of Andrea Alciato, in 1531, followed by many similar compilations of emblems, usually in large parts copied from Signor Alciato. Emblems consist of three parts: a heading or motto, an illustration and a commentary or moralising text. When Geffrey Whitney published the first English emblem book in 1586 he followed the established formula. On the bottom of page 87 he showed a pelican in her piety under the motto: ‘Quod in te est prome’ (literally: bring forth what is in you – not a bad motto). The verse below starts: ‘The Pellican, for to revive her younge, Doth peirce her brest, and geve them of her blood’.

The popularity of the pelican emblem can be observed in many examples of the amazing early 17th century gloves in the Spence Collection, owned by the Glovers’ Company and now housed at the Fashion Museum at Bath. Scroll down to No. 23370 on this page, or have a look here.

Pelicans obviously were still popular in the late 18th century, when our watch was probably made. So how does all this help us with our fausse montre? Not very much, I fear. So far I have been unable to connect the pelican emblem to any ancestors of Lord Harcourt, who bequested the watch to the Museum, but then he might have acquired it during his lifetime.

It is not clear whether the pelican gloves in the Spence collection were made for a gentleman or a lady, but my hunch is that the pelican was more of a female emblem. And the watch is an equipage, usually worn by women, rather than a pocket watch with a string. I like to think that it was given as a present to a devoted mother but I now doubt that I will ever find out. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. And if you want to further your pelican studies, have a look here.

PS: Apologies for the long gap between this and my last post. By now you might have seen our advertising campaign for our new galleries and/or have seen some reviews. We have all been working very hard to get it all ready. Only one week to go!