Littler watch ...

.
I will not be getting a job on the Antiques Road Show.

But I am getting closer to the identity of the Little Watch.

When I put him back in the bureau, there was another one. Even smaller. About the size of a florin.

Sweet. Similar. But, alas, minus one aiguille. If it were supposed to have two.

Littler Watch -- which is more decorative -- does not seem to have what my friend Allister tells me are the assay marks stamped on Little Watch: just that tiny I (or is it a gamma) and a a very faint 5-digit number. I86152 or Z.

No chain, and no key, because this one winds from the bezel on the top.

And this is a lady's watch. Because it is engraved (in German), inside the case, to our dear Rudi 24 May 1901 from her parents. That's my great grandparents and my grandmother. She would have been rising fourteen years of age,

Young Rudi (extreme left)

Well, perhaps the multifaceted Allister (he knows so much about so many thing and he's only a youngster!) can decipher this one! One thing we know ... whether it began life in Vienna or not, it was there in 1901, came to New Zealand some half-century later, and snuck into my bureau a few years ago. How? Easy, that one. When Rudi died, her small all (and nothing of value) came to her only son, Fritz/Fred. When Fred died, to his wife, Nancy. When Nancy, my mother, died, I was in Europe and her belongings were brought to Gerolstein where, in my absence, the heroic Wendy stashed everything tidily away ... the diaries, the photo albums from Austria, the books, the trinkets ... I guess there are still little boxes to be opened ..

But, for now, lets find out about Rudi's watch(es)!