The first Swiss wristwatch

The need

None of a technical kind. It was jewellery: a small watch a woman could wear on the arm and consult without reaching for a pocket watch.

Made for

Not a known commission. The firm made it in 1868 and its ledgers record the sale eight years later, on 13 November 1876, to Countess Koscowicz of Hungary.

What was new

A Geneva manufacture selling a watch built into a bracelet, rather than a one-off made to royal order.

Worth knowing

It is small and it is wound with a key, not a crown: a six-ligne movement, no. 27368, with a cylinder escapement, in a rectangular gold case whose hinged cover, set with diamonds and enamel, closes over the dial. For the next thirty years the bracelet watch stayed a women’s accessory.

Where it is now

On display in the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva.

Historian’s noteThe claim is the first Swiss wristwatch, and the word matters. Breguet made a bracelet watch for Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, ordered in June 1810; it is older by more than half a century, but it has been lost since the 1850s.

SourcesPatek Philippe · Patek Philippe Museum