A fine traditional and exceptional quality mercury barometer with a broken arched pediment, hinged front door, exposed mercury tube with a single vernier silvered dial signed and spirit thermometer tube, inlaid stringing and turned cistern cover, 95cm high.

Circa1800

Giovanni Battista Ronchetti ('Baptist') 

£ 2995

Baptist Ronchetti emigrated from the village of Tavernerio, near Lake Como in Italy, andcame to Manchester in about 1790.

He set up a business as a weather glass (or barometer) manufacturer at 15, High Street.

In the first few years of the nineteenth century, he moved to 51, Spear Street, an address which appears on barometers signed by other Italian migrants.

This communal location may have reduced the makers' costs and so made it easier for them to work in Manchester during the difficult depression years.

In about 1805, Ronchetti sent to Italy for his son Charles Joshua, then aged about 15, and his relative, Luigi Antonio Casartelli ('Louis'). Little is known of the three men's movements for the next 10 years.

However, Charles Joshua left Manchester, probably because of the lack of business. In about 1811, he married Frances Whitworth, the daughter of an excise officer of Bury, and their first son, John Baptist, was born a year later.

The couple then moved to Liverpool where Charles Joshua set up a business in about 1814. Meanwhile, Baptist Ronchetti had retired to Italy and his business had been taken over by Louis.

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