Oval Watchcase with Birds and Smaller Motifs

Art Historical Context

This delicate oval print, created around 1614–1619 by Jacques Hurtu Pierre Firens I, served as a design for an ornate watchcase. Measuring just over four inches tall, the sheet showcases a graceful arrangement of birds amid scrolling foliage and smaller decorative motifs. Rendered in blackwork and engraving, the image captures the refined taste of early seventeenth-century Europe, when personal timepieces were becoming prized luxury objects. Blackwork engraving, a technique that fills areas with dense, velvety black tones through intricate linework, allowed artists to suggest the rich textures of metalwork and enamel. Such prints functioned as pattern books for goldsmiths and watchmakers, translating two-dimensional designs into three-dimensional objects worn close to the body. The presence of birds evokes themes of time and nature, common in Renaissance and Baroque ornament. Today preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of drawings and prints, this small sheet offers a window into the collaborative world of printmakers and craftsmen who shaped the decorative arts of their era.