Component chronology

A decorated watch can preserve components made a century apart. V&A 4869-1901 has a 1640–1660 case and a later Vrythoff movement; M.33:1,2,3-2018 combines a seventeenth-century enamel exterior with an eighteenth-century Caille movement and an unresolved later assembly history. Record component dates separately, retain ranges, and distinguish a proposed assembly date from a dated observation. A movement signature does not date its enclosing enamel.