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The Encyclopedia of Horology

Watch family · Style & purpose

Ladies' Bracelet Watches

Partially verified

Women's wristwatches in which the case is integrated into, or made secondary to, a decorative metal or gem-set bracelet, continuing a jewellery-first design tradition distinct from men's strap-worn wristwatches of the same periods.

Movement & mechanism

  • Small manual-wind (later also quartz) movement, chosen primarily for its small dimensions to suit a slender bracelet-mounted case
  • Case frequently concealed within, or made a minor visual element of, an articulated gold or gem-set bracelet
  • Dial sometimes covered by a hinged lid, echoing the concealed-dial tradition of cocktail watches

Identification

  • Case width narrow relative to a fully articulated, jewellery-grade bracelet
  • Dial often small and secondary in visual emphasis to the bracelet's gem-setting or goldwork
  • Frequently sold and hallmarked through the jewellery trade rather than purely as a watch

Terminology

  • Wristlet watch — an early period term for a small ladies' strap or bracelet watch
  • Bracelet watch — a watch in which the strap is itself an articulated jewellery bracelet rather than a plain leather or metal band

Known variations

  • Plain gold bracelet watch
  • Gem-set bracelet watch
  • Covered-dial bracelet watch

Pocket-watch ancestry

Ladies' bracelet watches descend from the nineteenth-century wristlet, itself an ornamental strap or bracelet fitted with a small watch, which predates the man's wire-lug wristwatch by decades and shows that decorative wrist-worn timekeeping for women had an independent, jewellery-led origin somewhat separate from the pocket-watch-conversion history of men's wristwatches.

Collecting notes

Collected within ladies' and jewellery watch collecting, where bracelet construction, gem quality and hallmarking generally weigh as heavily as, or more heavily than, the movement; because bracelets are separable, matching a bracelet's date and quality to its watch head is a common attribution task.

Related photographs

Prim mechanical wrist watch disassembled part 1
Prim mechanical wrist watch disassembled part 1 — Kozuch, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons file page
Prim mechanical wrist watch disassembled part 2
Prim mechanical wrist watch disassembled part 2 — Kozuch, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons file page
Mechanical wristwatch
Mechanical wristwatch — Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons file page

No confidently matched photograph of this subject has been found yet. These photographs show a closely related record, and are not examples of the type described on this page.

Sources & references

  1. General literature on ladies' jewellery and wristlet watches; comprehensive maker-by-maker documentation is limited.

Where sources disagree, the disagreement is stated rather than resolved silently.