Open Face in Stainless Steel

1933 was the height of the Art Deco decade, and this watch is a thoroughly 1933 object. Steel, not silver: harder, colder, brighter, the material of aircraft and architecture rather than of the jewellery trade. Choosing it for a watch from Geneva's oldest house was a modernist statement, and the piece wears it plainly, a 47mm open face with a clean line and no ornament anywhere on the outside.

The face makes the argument. It is a two-tone sector dial, a matte cream centre inside a silvered outer track, the layout the modernist thirties made its own. The hour markings alternate, rose gold Arabic figures at the even hours and slim rose gold batons between them, matched by the rose gold hands and even the winding crown, one warm note repeated against the white and the steel. The sub-seconds at six carries a raised centre disc with a soft sunray finish. Under close light the surface shows the light, even mottling of ninety years, with figures and printing clear throughout; nothing has been restored.

At 63.9 grams the watch is substantial in the hand, and the steel has aged the way the material promises to: no tarnish, no creeping patina, the original finish still present with its lustre. The crown winds and sets cleanly, the snap back opens without resistance, and it runs well.

Ninety years later, the tension this watch was born into, between tradition and modernity, between the oldest house in Geneva and the newest material in the workshop, reads as clearly as it did in 1933. It has simply been kept, in good working order, all this time.

The marks, the movement and the condition are set out piece by piece in the drawers below; the three signatures and serials are recorded in The Record.