Watch 1755 - 1765

This watch, now residing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was crafted in the 18th century by John Ellicott. In Ellicott's time, personal timepieces were more than functional; they were potent symbols of status and scientific progress. The watch stands as a marker of identity, intertwined with emerging capitalist notions of productivity and the control of labor. For whom, then, was time of the essence? Certainly not the working classes. Consider the cultural milieu in which this watch circulated. During the Enlightenment, the quantification of time through precision instruments became a marker of European modernity and, problematically, superiority. As we consider this object, let's reflect on how it also embodies the complex, often unequal, relationships between time, power, and social identity.