Eight-Day Watch with a Signed Cartouche, La Chaux-de-Fonds, c.1930
We’d love to help this piece find its next collection.
An eight-day watch asks something unusual of its movement: a full week of running, and then a margin, from a single winding. Cornioley of La Chaux-de-Fonds, founded around 1917, built such movements around two barrels with differential winding, and its eight-day watches have passed through Antiquorum.
This example sets that eight-day movement under a dial with two matching oval panels balanced against each other on the silvered ground: running seconds on the left, and opposite it a mirror-polished cartouche carrying the lettering 8 DAYS / CORNIOLEY. Tall Deco Arabic numerals ring them, under violet-blued Breguet hands with the open ring near the tip. The typography and geometry are Art Deco doing what it did best, order without ornament, and the silvered ground has toned to an even frosted speckle that suits the instrument character of the watch.
The case is chrome, 50mm, the modish industrial material of the period, showing honest wear consistent with age and no damage. The movement runs well, winds smoothly and sets correctly, and the case back opens cleanly.
