The pendant watch has its roots in the 17th century and has seen several waves of popularity over the years, including the Belle Époque of the 19th century, the Art Nouveau period of the early 20th century, and the 1970s.
Now style is back, with luxury watchmakers from Jaeger-LeCoultre to Chanel introducing designs inspired by history but with contemporary panache.
“If you look back to the beginnings of wearable timepieces,” said Paul Boutros, deputy chairman and head of watches for America at Phillips auction house in New York City, “the pendant watch really started as a matter of convenience, a way to transport a watch in a way that looks like jewelry and makes a statement.”
At that time, watches were all handmade and very expensive – so it was wealthy men who invented ways to attach their timepieces to chains or pieces of ribbon so they could be worn around the neck or hung from a belt for all to see.
By the 19th century, women had watches and began attaching them to long waving chains called sautoirs in French, which were often embellished with diamonds and other precious stones.
Then, “in the 1960s and especially the 1970s,” Mr. Boutros said, watch brands that also made jewelry introduced a number of elaborate pendant watches. For example, in 1971, Piaget made a sautoir watch with a tiger eye beaded dial on a gold chain that sold for 23,750 Swiss francs (now the equivalent of $26,515) at a Phillips auction in 2015.
“Sautoirs bring together Piaget’s mastery of ultra-thin timepieces and expertise in gold craftsmanship,” Jean-Bernard Forot, Piaget’s head of patrimonials, said during a telephone interview from the company’s headquarters in Plan-les-Ouates, just outside Geneva. “This is evidenced by the creation of the pendants in the 1960s during an astonishing period of creativity. We called these long stretches ‘Swinging Sautoirs’ and they became the perfect emblem for the beautiful jet set society of the time that kept asking for more.”
At Watches & Wonders Geneva 2023, the brand unveiled three unique Piaget Sautoir watches (prices on request), as well as updates to some of its most evocative designs from the past.
A Piaget Sautoir is a twisted double-strand 18-carat gold necklace, which took 130 hours to make, with a 25.38-carat oval cabochon-cut Zambian emerald and an oval 18-carat yellow gold quartz watch with a malachite dial and a bezel set with diamonds and emeralds.
The second was embellished with turquoise and the third, a particular challenge for the craftsmen, was an 18 carat braided gold chain with 6.41 carats of diamonds. According to Mr. Forot, it took seven months to make the third Sautoir because the brand had “lost the technique of the 1960s. They patiently reinvented the techniques, hand-threading the gold into these little chains and adding a modern eye to make it even more perfect.
Secret watches
More often than not, a modern pendant watch is also a secret watch, the industry term for timepieces with covers that can be pushed aside to reveal the time. The style allows the dial to be adorned with diamonds and other precious stones, engravings, inlays or other artistic embellishments to enhance the sense that the piece is a real piece of jewelery as well as a watch.
This year, Chanel, Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari, and Jaeger-LeCoultre all introduced sautoir necklaces with hidden dials.
Chanel’s Mademoiselle Privé Lion collection, which debuted at Watches and Wonders Geneva, includes an 18-carat yellow gold pendant watch with a black lacquered dial, covered with the diamond-encrusted face of a lion on a black background that can be flipped sideways to reveal the time. The quartz watch is accented with 336 diamonds totaling 7.90 carats and hangs from a chain of black onyx, gold beads and diamonds. Only 20 will be made (price on request).
“A sautoir that secretly tells the time,” wrote Arnaud Chastaingt, director of Chanel’s Watchmaking Creation Studio, in an email, “requires a lot of ingenuity to integrate a caliber, hide the dial, work the hinges.”
The lion motif was chosen, the brand said, because Leo was the founder’s astrological sign. “Gabrielle Chanel’s personal universe continues to be an endless source of true inspiration to me,” wrote Mr. Chastaingt. “I like the idea of this lion’s face, dear to Mademoiselle Chanel, beautiful and secretly keeping time.”
Also at Watches and Wonders Geneva, Van Cleef & Arpels introduced six variations of sautoir secret watches in its Perlée collection. Each has a 90-centimetre (35.4 in) 18-karat gold chain that culminates in a 25-millimeter round secret watch with a mother-of-pearl dial surrounded by a diamond-studded gold bezel.
Three variations feature gem-encrusted dials. Two, in 18-carat yellow gold, with emeralds or sapphires; the third, in 18-karat rose gold, has rubies. The other three use cabochon-cut gemstone plates to cover their dials: pale blue chalcedony with 18k white gold, rose quartz with 18k rose gold, or blue sodalite with 18k yellow gold.
“At Van Cleef & Arpels, we look at watches from a jeweler’s perspective, combining the reading of time with the idea of adornment,” Nicolas Bos, the house’s president and chief executive, wrote in an email. This is how necklaces, brooches, bracelets and sometimes even rings with a dial are created.”
Mr. Bos noted that the first Perlée pendant secret watches were introduced in 2019, but were inspired by the style’s 17th-century origins, as well as the lapel watches and chatelaines (clusters of chains for hanging keys and other household items) that Van Cleef & Arpels made in the past.
“Today,” he wrote, “these references lead to delicate and unexpected interpretations with creations that allow for a playful vision of time, a time that is both personal and secret.”
In history
Bulgari also capitalized on its history this year with its one-of-a-kind Secret Watch necklace Cameo Imperiale, which was introduced in May at the house’s jewelers’ event in Venice.
Inspired by the Monete Bulgari collections of the 1960s, featuring ancient Roman and Greek coins, the house commissioned artisans in Torre del Greco, Italy, a traditional center of cameo carving, to create a cameo portrait of Cleopatra. The statue of the Egyptian queen was then surrounded with diamonds and pink and blue sapphires, creating a watch cover that resembles an intricate coin.
The manually wound watch features an in-house Tourbillon Lumière BVL 208 caliber skeletonized movement, visible through the transparent sapphire crystal. The 56 millimeter case and the chain, both in 18 carat rose gold, are set with diamonds and rubies (price on request).
“Coins are symbols of evolution. They are an authentic and tangible part of our history. They are captivating because they come so many centuries ago,” Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, executive director of Bulgari’s product creation, wrote in an email. “At Bulgari we love to play with objects, approach them differently and create new ways to wear jewelery and watches. This pendant watch is a fusion between a jewel and a timepiece.”
Jaeger-LeCoultre’s famous Reverso watch, first made in 1931, has the secret watch concept in its design: a rectangular movement whose case can be pushed to one side, flipped over, and then pushed back into place to reveal the other side.
In the case of the Reverso Secret Necklace, a limited edition that debuted at Watches and Wonders Geneva, the case back is set with diamonds and onyx in a geometric floral pattern, while the dial side is rendered in rose gold, diamonds and black onyx. The rectangular watch is powered by the brand’s Caliber 846, an in-house 93-piece manual-winding movement made for the Reverso line (price on request).
The three-foot chain, made of 18-carat pink gold and studded with diamonds and black onyx beads, is inspired by the twisted black cord that was sometimes used as a strap for the Reverso women’s watches of the 1930s. Lariat-like, diamond-encrusted lugs hug the watch, which features two tassels accented with diamonds and elongated onyx drops.
In total, the brand said, more than 3,000 diamonds with a total weight of 18 carats were used on the Reverso Secret Necklace, and it requires more than 300 hours of gem setting.
“With a strong Reverso heritage and knowledge of historic watches, we see that there is still a strong market for exclusive watches that bring together the impressive worlds of high-end watches and high-end jewelry in one,” said Catherine Rénier, the brand’s CEO, during an interview with Watches and Wonders Geneva. “The Reverso Secret Necklace has reopened a creative world at Jaeger-LeCoultre, which is why we will continue to design and create more Reverso Secret Necklace expressions in the future.”
