Another Lord Elgin 1950

This is a nice model I’ve had for many years and one of the most accurate vintage ones of that period.

On the wrist looks bigger than it is owing to the extended hinged lug arrangement.

It features a quality Lord Elgin cal. 670, 21 jewel, Swiss lever 3 position adjusted manual movement. Power Reserve is an excellent 50 hours.

It is neatly cased within a Barrel or Tonneau shaped Wadsworth 14k Gold Filled body with fully extended articulated ‘fancy lugs’, so fits almost any wrist and looks good. Additionally the case features decoration on the top and lower pivot points.

The dial is a superb original coloured one with printed Roman numerals and perimeter minute graduations. Seconds are indicated by a sub-dial @6 and all hands are gold colour which contrasts well with the background.

The Barrel or Tonneau case dimensions – 22mm wide, 28mm upper/lower and 47.5mm to articulated arms. Case depth 9mm (including high-curve crystal). Overall a rather neatly designed model.

I featured this model back in 2024 here. And as I’m going through a vintage watch wearing year, I’m featuring a few of them currently as it proves just how good these watches are. I have quite a large collection and it never fails to impress. Lying in a cabinet for goodness knows how long, perhaps wound occasionally, rarely, if ever serviced or lubricated, they can be picked it up wound and they soldier on. And often with remarkable timekeeping.

So this model started life around 76 years ago is ticking away just fine – surely a testament to what is essentially a marvel of micro engineering. And unlike so many things today, should it go wrong (Heaven forbid!) it’s actually repairable – though happily in the case of this one – has never needed a thing done to it!

And this is probably my main reason for collecting mechanical watches – as they can accompany you through your lifetime and beyond. A very rare thing today!

1940’s Lord Elgin ‘Drake’watch

Another vintage watch I’m wearing in rotation is this nice 21 jewel Lord Elgin ‘Drake’ Art Deco model.

1940’s vintage Lord Elgin Drake 14k Gold Filled Wadsworth cased.

Great ‘fancy lugs’ 14k Gold Filled Case, sets off the brilliant perfect condition dial. This features what was quite an early use of the Dauphine shaped gold hour and minute hands and unusually, a matching Dauphine profile hand in the sub-seconds dial @6. Applied numerals and markers and a curved crystal semi curved case give this model an unusual look and style.

Fitted to a Crocodile leather strap and matching buckle and working very well, this is now a firm favourite of mine, especially as it is in such great condition (not often seen as good).

Note the strongly curved crystal and case top plate, which give that nice ‘close to the wrist’ look. The case back however, is straight, so an optical illusion really, but as the case dimensions are just 37mm lug to lug, a curved back is not required.
The ‘fancy lugs’ as they are often called are more correctly known as ‘shrouded’ lugs and in this case semi-shrouded as the strap can still be seen from the front when worn on the wrist. Note too that the shrouds also are included in the ‘curve’ of the complete watch.

The case back is by Wadsworth, who were a prime case maker in this period and Elgin liked them so much they took them over in 1953. They specialised in solid and Gold filled cases. Factually Gold Filled was a high quality alternative to solid Gold and was at least 5% gold by weight, is heat-bonded and a very much thicker layer than Gold plated – which only required around 0.05% gold by weight and was a very thin layer indeed and can often be seen wearing off and showing the base metal underneath.

So, no fear of that with 14k Gold filled as this watch, which is why they can look so good after so many years.

Anyway over the next week in rotation I’m wrist wearing Elin, Lord Elgin, Buren, Vertex, Gruen Veri-thin, Longines and Blancpain. The week after yet another set, which keeps my vintage watches wound and working just as they did when first made a very long time ago. And ‘batteries’ – who needs ’em?

The Buren Art Deco bi-colour

One of my favourite vintage watches is this nice Art Deco Buren bi-colour Gold manual watch. Original untouched dial features an index around the edge, black Arabic numerals of dark blue steel hands and subsidiary seconds dial @6.

circa 1936 Buren Art Deco bi-colour Gold.

The case is predominantly Yellow Gold with extended White Gold lug/decoration. The lugs are also semi-articulating with solid screwed fixed bars to a high quality leather black strap and matching gold buckle. An un-engraved curved Gold ‘snap’ back opens to a very nice original Buren movement.

The watch dates from around 1936 when small seconds dials were a classic feature of the period (Buren introduced central seconds around 1944) and the overall watch is very slim indeed. The thin profile was another feature of many Buren models, which culminated I understand when they produced a couple of notable milestones in Automatic models in the early 1950’s.

This model whilst very slim indeed is not too small on the wrist however with a case diameter of 22.5mm and 45mm lug to lug and is a delight to wear.

For information on Buren and it’s English origins and history can be found here – https://www.time2tell.com/en/history-of-the-brands/496-the-true-story-of-buren-watches.html

As a collector though I have always liked Buren, as they were true innovators and so much so, that I now have a fair number and even as I have many modern models in my collections, I’m finding that I tend to wear these older vintage models today.
Most I wear are before 1955 and earlier models like this one from the Art Deco period which is one of my admired periods. And today even in my general antique objects collection (other than watches) are also harking back to those times.

Perhaps it’s the overall quality and inventiveness of the design of those periods that attracts me now – as ‘design’ these days seems to be a sadly maligned concept that lost it’s way somehow.

Indeed today seems an unfortunately reckless and throw-away society to me, which is the absolute opposite of a true vintage mechanical watch, which can be – well ‘timeless’ – which is a word that springs to mind and paradoxically perhaps is rather apt – an ‘oxymoron’ if you will.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oxymoron