The Cabinet
The Engraved Egg Watch — c. 1590
Portable time, hatched in the French Renaissance.
- Work
- Egg-form watch, Paris
- Maker
- Denis Martinot
- Date
- c. 1590
- Held by
- Cleveland Museum of Art (1929.994, Open Access)
- License
- CC0
- Master
- 2826×3400px
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
Sizes are capped to what this piece’s real source scan honestly supports — we never enlarge past the engraving.
$29.00
The story
An egg-form watch engraved in the French Renaissance manner — the "Nuremberg egg" idea, Parisian and precise, by Denis Martinot around 1590. The earliest portable watches were eggs before they were discs; the shape remembers when merely carrying time was the miracle. Notice the engraving wrapping the curved case: ornament solving geometry, a flat pattern taught to live on a shell. Portable time, hatched.
See it on your wall
The mechanism, made for a room
The Engraved Egg Watch — c. 1590 printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of an open-access work held by Cleveland Museum of Art (1929.994, Open Access), served under the institution’s stated license (CC0) — source linked below.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper or 400gsm canvas; framed pieces sit behind acrylic.
- The artwork is never cropped and never enlarged past its scan — sizes stop where the engraving stops holding.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Source: Cleveland Museum of Art (1929.994, Open Access) — the scan this reproduction is printed from, and the page documenting its public-domain / open-access status. We are unaffiliated with any watch manufacturer, past or present.
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