GIRARD PERREGAUX 1960s DRESS
£375.00
Description
Simple Elegance from Girard Perregaux
Item description: Late 1960s, early 1970s stainless steel dress watch from Girard Perregaux, Switzerland. The watch with a stainless steel square style case, and with inverted lugs. Complementing the case, is a unusual silvered dial in the form of slightly cushioned horizontal panels. The dial bearing the name Girard Perregaux. The watch with a fine 17 jewel movement, signed to the top bridge. The inside of the case-back fully stamped with the Girard Perregaux name and logo. The watch with a black crocodile strap and stainless steel non-branded buckle.
Size: 38mm x 26mm
Condition report: The watch in excellent condition. Dial original and excellent condition. Movement clean and functioning (no warranty implied). The timepiece may have been opened, so it should not be used near moisture or water without being checked by a qualified watchmaker.
Background to Girard perregaux: In 1791, watchmaker and goldsmith Jean-François Bautte signed his first watches. He created a manufacturing company in Geneva, grouping, for the first time ever, all the watch making facets of that time. This meant starting from the engineering of the watch, all the way to the final hand assembly and hand polishing of each watch. In 1852, the watchmaker Constant Girard founded the Girard & Cie Firm in La Chaux-de-Fonds. He married Marie Perregaux and the Girard-Perregaux Manufacture was born in 1856. In 1906, Constant Girard-Gallet, who had taken control of the company from his father, took over the Bautte House; merging it with Girard-Perregaux & Cie. In 1880, Constant Girard produced the first ever major commercial production of a wristwatch, made for German naval officers and ordered by German Kaiser Wilhelm I for his German naval officers. Two-thousand such watches were ordered and produced. A large quantity for the time.
In 1965 Girard-Perregaux designed the first high frequency mechanic movement with the balance beating at 36,000 vibrations/hour (Gyromatic HF), and just two years later, in 1967, the company received the Centenary Award from the Astronomical Observatory de Neuchatel in recognition of the accomplishments of the Manufacture generally, and specifically for the Observatory Chronometer wristwatch that used the Gyromatic HF movement.
Girard-Perregaux were always operating at the pinnacle of technology, so it was no surprise, when in 1970, the Company presented the world’s first quartz wristwatch. This kept Girrard Perregaux afloat during the quartz revolution of the 1970s, and into the mechanical rennaissance of the 1980s. Today, the company is still respected for its high quality mechanical watches.
Provenance: n/a
Ordering: shop@jensenmuseum.org or telephone: +1694-781354
