The Reverso has long been a popular watch design. It was the watch my grandfather, Jean-Jacques Cartier, wore when riding horses as its clever mechanism protected the dial while galloping through the countryside.
This year marks the Reverso's 90th anniversary: the story goes that, around 1930, César de Trey, a Swiss businessman in dentistry and then watches, was visiting India where British army officers had taken up polo.
The combination of swinging mallets and fast horses was not exactly watch-friendly, so de Trey is said to have imagined a design whereby the fragile glass dial could be protected by flipping over the case.
Not long after, industrial designer René Alfred Chauvot patented "a watch capable of sliding in its support and being completely turned over" and by the summer of 1931, de Trey had bought the rights to launch the Reverso.
He partnered with Jacques David LeCoultre (at this stage Jaeger and LeCoultre were still separate firms). As one of the world's first sports watches, it didn't take long for the Reverso to make a mark. I love some of the early adverts (3rd and 4th images), but by the 1960s the design had fallen into relative obscurity.
It was revived the following decade when Giorgio Corvo, an Italian watch dealer, happened upon a drawer full of the last 200 Reverso cases when visiting the JLC factory. He bought them, fitted the movements and sold out within a month.
Not long after, JLC decided to revive the watch — in 1981, one of its engineers redesigned it — and today it's an iconic design. As someone fascinated by design history, I think it's great that JLC are sharing their past in such an open and hands-on way. There's also a fine new book on the Reverso by Nicholas Foulkes for anyone who wants to go deeper. Any other Reverso fans out there?
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