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The Cabinet
The Book Watch — c. 1580
A watch disguised as a tiny devotional book.
- Work
- Watch in the form of a book
- Maker
- Diet Maye
- Date
- c. 1580
- Held by
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Open Access)
- License
- CC0
- Master
- 2000×2000px
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
A gilt watch disguised as a tiny devotional book, complete with clasp — a book that locks its own hours. The Renaissance watch was jewelry, toy, and confession of wealth, and the disguise was the luxury: time as something you could pretend to read. Diet Maye's little machine, made around 1580, belongs to the era when owning a watch at all was the complication, and the case existed to make the miracle discreet.
See it on your wall
The mechanism, made for a room
The Book Watch — c. 1580 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 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (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: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (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.
