Waltham - White Enamel Dial - Engraved Spartan Case - 1904

Cartier dates the beginning of the Santos story to 1904. That year, the house says, Alberto Santos-Dumont asked his friend Louis Cartier for a watch he could read while flying without taking his hands from the controls. He had been in the air for three years by then, having circled the Eiffel Tower in an airship in 1901. In America, the wristwatch was still unsettled territory. In Massachusetts, Waltham's records date this movement to that same year.

The factory record has it as grade 115, model 1900, nought size, fifteen jewels, hunting configuration, with a Breguet overcoil on a grade the factory never adjusted. The hunting configuration is what matters here. That layout already carries the crown at three and the small seconds at six, while an open-faced movement turned to bring its crown to three sends the seconds round to nine. The geometry a wristwatch would need was already sitting there.

By 1914 the American trade still had not made up its mind. That December, Jacques Depollier and Son of Brooklyn advertised a single watch wearable seven ways: expansion bracelet, moiré ribbon wristlet, leather wristlet, elastic wristlet, silk sautoir convertible into a drop watch, chatelaine, and chain sautoir. Seven answers sold together, because nobody yet knew which one the country would pick.

The Waltham sits in a case built for the wrist rather than the pocket. It is an Illinois Watch Case Company Spartan, a rounded square far more worked than a plain recasing shell, engraved in small flowers and scrolling leaves around the bezel and again along the band, with a large onion crown. The Spartan was a base metal grade and the plating has had a hard life, with extensive loss and spotting across the back, scratches throughout, wear around the edges and smaller losses down inside the engraving.

The dial is high fired enamel, glass fused to a copper base and ground flat, which does not yellow or fade the way a painted dial does. It can craze or chip, and this one has not. Black Roman numerals fill the chapter with WALTHAM beneath the twelve, the sunk seconds register sits at six, the outer minute track is still sharp, and dark openworked hands cross it. There are small age marks close up, and the domed crystal carries only light marks.

The movement is nickel finished with wave damaskeening across a split three-quarter plate, signed A.W.W.Co., WALTHAM, MASS., 15 JEWELS. The bracelet is a later silver tone Speidel expansion band with textured centers, stamped SPEIDEL U.S.A.

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.

All sales final.