Watchmaking 101 – The Watch Strap’s Evolution Over 100 years

Then pilots’ watches, such as the Longines Majetek or Hour-Angle watches, grew in popularity, especially the latter which was useful for calculating the direction of aviation by early explorers such as Charles Lindbergh. Leather straps became popular during the time between WWI and WWII, as well as in WWII. They were more elegant when worn in the urban environment, and more durable when worn out in the field. With wristwatches becoming de rigueur among business executives and automobile owners, who needed both hands on the wheel to drive safely, watches became smaller, and so did movements. Watch straps soon became a distinguishing factor in style, something that characterised an individual.

The post-WWII revival of luxury saw the return of bracelets to wristwatches, as materials that were precious were once again available. Glamorous jewellery-like bracelets emerged, and sophisticated techniques produced by jewellers or specialist bracelet makers such as Gay Frères (founded by Jean-Pierre Gay and Gaspard Tissot) were developed. The post-Quartz crisis era saw many of these techniques and producers disappear from the market, as craftspersons left to work in other industries. In recent years, watchmakers like Chopard have begun to regain the expertise of bracelet-making. Chopard’s Alpine Eagle collection, for example, has over 100 parts that have to be hand-finished and assembled by a single bracelet craftsperson. The long bar-type link is specially designed for a structure with flexibility, and grooved in the centre where a polished top-link is screwed in. The result is a stepped appearance that is incredibly elegant in style.

The benefit of this is that Bvlgari can now enhance the Tubogas Infiniti bracelet with gemsetting, which was not possible in the past because fixed prongs or channels could not be carved out properly. The combination of jewellery and watchmaking craft led to this innovation, along with the Serpenti Spiga, which has an even more intricate wheat stalk motif carved into the bracelet.

While these are techniques that relate more to jewellery watches, similar developments took place with men’s bracelet watches. The ladder bracelet by Gay Frères, originally designed for and recently revived by Zenith, was a highly popular design with its “openworked” concept – with links removed from the bracelet to make it lighter, more comfortable, and easy-fitting on the wrist. Today, the Zenith Defy Revival Shadow, as well as the Safari edition, offer the same construction in a matte titanium bracelet – a unique style that creates a distinctive casual elegance. The latest from Zenith also introduces a rather new bracelet material – ceramic, which has been used in women’s fine watchmaking for some time, and is fast gaining traction among more mainstream watch brands. For its 160^th anniversary this year, Zenith introduced an entire range of watches in blue ceramic, with bracelets to match their lightweight cases.