Hamilton - 1929 - Engraved Cushion Dress Watch - Christmas Day Gift - Antique Silver Dial

On Christmas Day in 1929, this watch was given to a man named G.J. Vermaas. His name and the date are engraved inside the caseback, and Vermaas is a Dutch name, which marks him almost certainly as an immigrant or the son of one, from a people who had been putting down roots around New York since it was still New Amsterdam. The gift came barely two months after the markets crashed that October, in the first uncertain winter of what would become the Great Depression, and what he was handed was about as American as a watch could be. Hamilton had built its name in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on railroad-grade pocket watches, instruments held to a tolerance tight enough to keep the nation's trains off one another on shared track, and by the end of the 1920s it had carried that precision onto the wrist. To give a Hamilton was to give the American standard, and to put it in a Dutchman's hands that particular Christmas was to give him something built to outlast whatever was coming.

The case is a cushion form in 14K gold filled, and around the full opening of the dial runs a dense band of geometric engraving, cut by hand, every figure crisp and deliberate, bordered by a fine line of milling along the outer edge of the bezel and worn just soft by years on the wrist. The body steps outward to the lugs in the manner of late Art Deco. Hand engraving of this kind left watchmaking in the decades that followed. The bracelet answers the bezel, an American-made Speidel expansion band whose links are worked in rows of small raised ovals that take up its geometry and carry it down the wrist. The case came from Fahys, the Brooklyn house founded by Joseph Fahys in 1872 and one of the finest American case makers of the period, who supplied the cases Hamilton fitted and finished for many of its wristwatches. The gold fill holds strong across the case, marked only by the fine scratches a worn watch collects over this many years. The crown is a period fluted gold crown, and the inner caseback is signed Hamilton Watch Co, Fahys, 14K Gold Filled.

The dial carries black Arabic numerals around the full chapter, a subsidiary seconds register at six, and the Hamilton signature beneath twelve, the slim skeleton hands of the period set over it with their luminous fill long since dried to a pale cream. It is original and untouched, settled into a soft, mottled silver that some collectors chase and others would send out to be restored, the printing and signature still whole across it.

Behind the dial sits the caliber 987-F, and the finishing is the kind a case keeps hidden. Straight bands of damascening are cut diagonally across the nickel plates, catching the light in parallel lines as the watch tilts. Seventeen rubies are pressed into the plate, the friction jeweling that gives the grade its F, and the steel screws are polished bright against the grained silver while the gold of the going train runs warm beneath them. The balance turns under a regulator marked F and S, and the maker's name, the grade, and the serial are engraved across the upper bridge in a clean hand. It is a 6/0 movement, the small caliber Hamilton built for the wrist as the pocket watch gave way, and a 1929 watch wears the version Hamilton had only just introduced. The watch is running.

Terms: Please review all photos carefully as they are a part of the listing. This is a vintage timepiece. Accuracy, power reserve, and water resistance are not guaranteed. Vintage watches may require periodic service. Performance can vary with wear, temperature, and position.

I am happy to service any unserviced watch listed on the site, please inquire about service charges when purchasing.

All sales final.