The pendant watch has its roots in the 17th century — and has sparked 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 the 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 beginning of portable timepieces,” said Paul Boutros, deputy chairman and head of watches for the Americas at Phillips auction house in New York City, “the pendant watch really began as a matter of convenience, a way to transport a watch in a way that looked like jewelry and made a statement.”
In that period, watches were all handmade and very costly — so it was wealthy men who devised ways of attaching their timepieces to chains or lengths 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 swaying necklaces, called sautoirs in French, which often were embellished with diamonds and other gemstones.
Then, “in the 1960s and especially the ’70s,” Mr. Boutros said, watchmaking brands that also made jewelry introduced some elaborate pendant watches. For example, in 1971 Piaget made a sautoir watch with a tiger’s-eye dial and beads on a gold chain that sold in 2015 for 23,750 Swiss francs (now the equivalent of $26,515) at a Phillips auction.
“Sautoirs bring together Piaget’s mastery of ultrathin watch movements and expertise in gold craftsmanship,” Jean-Bernard Forot, head of patrimony for Piaget, said during a phone interview from the company’s headquarters in Plan-les-Ouates, just outside Geneva. “This is shown in the creation of the pendants in the ’60s during an amazing period of creativity. We called these long pieces ‘Swinging Sautoirs’ and they became the perfect emblem for the beautiful jet-set society of the time who kept asking for more.”
At the 2023 Watches & Wonders Geneva, the brand unveiled three one-of-a-kind Piaget Sautoir watches (prices on application) as well as updates of some of its most evocative designs from the past.
One Piaget Sautoir is a twisted double-strand 18-karat gold chain, which took 130 hours to make, featuring a 25.38-carat oval cabochon-cut Zambian emerald and an oval 18-karat 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 to the artisans, was an 18-karat 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 from the ’60s. They patiently found the techniques again, threading the gold by hand into these tiny chains and adding the modern eye on it to make it even more perfect.”
Secret Watches
More often than not, a modern pendant watch is also a secret watch, the industry’s term for timepieces with covers that can be moved aside to reveal the time. The style allows the dial cover to be decorated with diamonds and other gems, engraving, marquetry or other artistic embellishments to heighten the sense that the piece is true jewelry, 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-karat yellow-gold pendant watch with a black lacquer dial, covered with the diamond-set face of a lion on a black background that can be swiveled aside to reveal the time. The quartz watch is accented with 336 diamonds totaling 7.90 carats and hangs on a necklace of black onyx, gold beads and diamonds. Only 20 will be made (price on application).
“A sautoir that secretly tells the time,” Arnaud Chastaingt, director of Chanel’s Watchmaking Creation Studio, wrote in an email, “means a lot of inventiveness to integrate a caliber, to dissimulate the dial, to work the hinges.”
The lion motif was chosen, the brand said, because Leo was its founder’s astrological sign. “Gabrielle Chanel’s personal universe remains endlessly a source of true inspiration to me,” Mr. Chastaingt wrote. “I love the idea of this lion’s face, dear to Mademoiselle Chanel, beautifully and secretly keeping the time.”
Also at Watches and Wonders Geneva, Van Cleef & Arpels introduced six variations of sautoir secret watches in its Perlée collection. Each one has a 90-centimeter (35.4-inch) 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-set…
Read More: Pendant-Style Watches Are Back – The New York Times