Eight-Day Watch with Twin Subsidiary Dials, La Chaux-de-Fonds
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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 built such movements around a double barrel, and supplied them to makers with reputations to protect; Hamilton sold Cornioley's work under its own name, which says what the trade thought of it, and the firm's pieces have passed through Antiquorum.
This example pairs that eight-day movement with a dial layout very few of them carry: 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.
Nothing about the watch needs attention, which is its own quiet argument: a travel and desk instrument from the 1920s that will still run from one Sunday to the next on a single winding.
