Six-Sided 'Tombstone'

By the early 1920s the pocket watch had long settled into its shape. Art Deco geometry was running through everything on the jeweller's counter, wristwatches, cigarette cases, vanity cases, and the dress pocket watch with them, cut as octagons, cushions and rarer outlines like this one. The case is cut with six straight sides, the outline the period trade called a tombstone, taller than it is wide, with the gold bow passing straight through the top edge rather than hanging from a round pendant. There is no ornament beyond the geometry itself: a plain polished bezel, flat polished gold, and edges that still meet crisply a century on. On this watch the shape is the point, and everything else is built to serve it.

The dial holds the same discipline. It is silvered with a fine grained finish that shifts in raking light, and the numerals are applied gold Arabics in the tall, narrow style of the decade, drawn out to follow the case rather than fight it. A railroad minute track runs inside them and a sub-seconds register sits at six. Nothing on the front is printed where it could be built: the numerals stand proud of the silver in solid gold, and the hands are gold too, each pierced with an open lozenge near the tip. The crown is fluted gold, small and correct for a dress watch.

The back is a plain polished field with a single engraving at its centre: three interlaced letters in an angular Art Deco hand, cut in the same straight-edged style as the case, so the initials read as part of the design rather than an afterthought. They have not been identified.

The flat surfaces catch light differently from a round case, in planes rather than a single curve.

The marks, the movement and the condition are set out in the drawers below.