Pillar

In antique watches, small columns of various shapes (e.g. cylindrical, conical, baluster) that join together two plates in the mechanism.

After 1660, pillars were often tastefully decorated. They could be given the form of a tulip, or be in a Louis XIV, Egyptian, etc., style.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, inexpensive watches featured cylindrical pillars supporting very thin brass plates.