396 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



November, 19 13 



ANY men of many minds," runs the 

 adage, and fortunate is it that it is so. 

 We cannot all do the same things nor 

 think the same thoughts, wish ■■■■■■■■■■ 

 it though we may. And 

 if we could 

 and did, the world would be an 

 intolerably stupid and monoto- 

 nous place. The blessed law of 

 inevitable diversity of taste and 

 pursuits holds good in the 

 realm of collecting as fully as 

 it does elsewhere, and dictates 

 this hobby to one person and 

 that to another, but to com- 

 paratively few has come the 

 fancy to collect watches. This 

 is well, for if many had the 

 same bent there would not be 

 enough old ones to begin to go 

 around, and the rare assem- 

 blage that forms the subject of f*T l ™"!T H " ,, 7 l,— ""1 

 present consideration of would Early Crystal case | 

 have been entirely impossible of accomplishment. A 



"Why, then," you will say, write about a 

 branch of collecting in which the field of opportunity is so 

 straightly bounded? It is tantalizing to hold up to view 



fascinating specimens, the likes of which one person in a 

 thousand can never hope to acquire because of their in- 

 creasing rarity." True, indeed. But this collection is of 

 singular intrinsic interest to begin with and, in 



6th 



berg 



the next place, it aptly illustrates the way in 

 ^■"■^^^■""■i which the collector has fol- 



lowed an intelligent and com- 

 prehensive system so that his 

 collection presents, in a pe- 

 culiarly lucid manner, the pro- 

 gressive steps of development 

 in an important industry that 

 called for a goodly share alike 

 of mechanical skill and artistic 

 craftsmanship. Any collection 

 made thus, presents far more 

 than the mere passing gratifi- 

 cation of some particular 

 phase or other of an acquisi- 

 tive fad. It sets forth suc- 

 cinctly a chapter of human 

 progress, and increases the 



Early German watch general s ' tore f m i n d-broaden- 



century Nurem-ing useful knowledge. 



watch face To come back to the collection immediately 



before us, there are several ways in which it might have 

 been made, several sides from which the evolution of the 



An early Nuremberg book-shaped fire-gilt watch case, face and bridge, antedating 1525 



