FORMIDA Vintage Chronograph cal. Landeron 48 / Two-Register, Patina Dial

An age in which many brands put their names on watches.

But behind those names were other craftsmen's hands.

Through the 1940s and 1950s, celebrated brands including Rolex put their own names on watches while sourcing every component — cases, movements, crystals — from other firms and assembling the results.

Which is why genuine engineering lived behind even a relatively unknown brand of the day.

In the 1940s in particular, an ébauche maker called Chronographe Suisse supplied inexpensive general-purpose chronograph movements and let many brands put their names on them.

There is a history of even local jewellers selling watches under their own brands, and this example is one of those.

Most watches of this period carried imported movements from Valjoux, Venus or Landeron, and with an exquisite size of 34 to 38mm they still hold real value as collector's items.

The movement is the Cal. Landeron 48.

On an ordinary chronograph the upper pusher starts and stops and the lower one resets; on this model, stop and reset are both handled by the lower pusher at four o'clock.

The patinated character marked into the dial gives off a vintage feeling.

But that atmosphere is not mere age: it holds an exotic shadow and resonates with a warm way of dressing.

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