This rare, and for the period, sophisticated early 18th century German repeating watch is fitted with a half-quarter repeating mechanism. The half-quarter repeater can sound the time to half a quarter hour, or ​7 1⁄2 minutes. It strikes hours and then quarter hours, like the quarter repeater, then it uses a single tone in order to signal if more than half of the current quarter hour has passed.

The German makers working in the late 17th and early 18th centuries were very advanced in the construction of repeating watches, indeed, recent research suggests that the minute repeating system could well have been invented in Germany in the early 18th century rather than in England circa 1750.

The respected watchmaker Wilhelm Köberle was working in Eichstädt, a small town in Brandenburg. Wilhelm Köberle is listed as being born circa 1648 in Wasserburg/Bodensee. He was married in Eichstädt on 16 February, 1688 and died on 21 August 1720. See: ‘Meister der Uhrmacherkunst’, Jürgen Abeler, 1977, p. 347.

Two miniature engraved gilt-brass travelling quarter-repeating hexagonal table clocks by Wilhelm Köberle were in the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, sold at Christie’s New York , 28 January 2015, lots 94 & 95.