The Naval Museum presents its new Catalog of mechanical watches, “one of the most important in Spain”

This Friday, the Naval Museum of Madrid presented its new Catalog of mechanical watches, a collection “of the most significant on the national scene, both for its typological variety and its quality”, as reported by the museum.

The collection of mechanical watches at the Naval Museum of Madrid is made up of a wide range of types, mostly military, as a result of collections carried out by the Spanish Navy.

These are productions by the main European makers of mechanical watches, such as John Arnold, José Rodríguez Losada, E. Dent & Co. or Ulysse Nardin, which have been developed throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

The publication details the origins of this collection and the biography and work of the most prominent watchmakers. Careful photography and detailed cataloging allow us to have images of each piece, both external and its internal mechanism, as well as knowing the technical data and history of each of the watches.

The catalog presentation event, chaired by the director of the Institute of Naval History and Culture of the Navy, Vice Admiral Enrique Torres Piñeyro, had the presence and participation of the former technical director of the Naval Museum, Lola Higueras; of Captain Juan Escrigas, current director of the Naval Museum; and Pablo Bernal Sánchez, author of the catalogue, the result of the Alvargonzález 2021-2022 research grant.

The director of the Naval Museum, Captain Juan Escrigas, was in charge of opening the event, showing his gratitude to the Alvargonzález Foundation.

Furthermore, the director of the Museum has highlighted that with this catalog “one more step is taken, which is to return to the path of publishing research results, so that what we do is known beyond the borders of the museum.”

Escrigas concluded his speech by announcing that “this will be the first catalog of many others that will be launched annually” and has announced that “the next one, whose publication is scheduled for next year, will be about the frames of the paintings of the Naval Museum, the great forgotten but authentic wonders, while the work corresponding to this year’s scholarship will be dedicated to the cataloging of the flags, an incredible investigation into historical flags.

For her part, Lola Higueras, a leading figure in the world of American research, underwater and naval archaeology, has been in charge of presenting this new work and its author, Pablo Bernal, “currently one of the most important personalities in the study of mechanical watchmaking in Spain”.

For Higueras, the catalog “represents a very interesting work element that is transferred to society, to researchers.” “It represents a very important collection of 46 pieces, which includes those used in the measurements of the great illustrated scientific expeditions, built by John Arnold, as well as those of the most prominent Spanish watchmaker, José Rodríguez Losada, already in the 19th century,” he said. detailed.

The author, Pablo Bernal, recalled his first contact with the Museum’s clock collection through research work he carried out on the clocks built by José Rodríguez Losada. This study is what allowed him to verify that “the historical collection of watches housed in the Naval Museum is one of the most interesting that existed in Spain.”

The oldest piece is a John Ellicott regulator dated around 1745, while the most modern is an anonymous wall clock from 1970. “Between the two, 44 ​​more clocks bring us closer to the history of the Navy over more than 200 years. years,” the author noted.