Santos-Dumont Skeleton

In 1904 Louis Cartier made a watch for Alberto Santos-Dumont because the Brazilian aviator could not read a pocket watch while flying. That is the founding story of the wristwatch as a serious object, and Cartier has been careful with it ever since.

This is the skeletonised execution, and the conceit is unusually direct: the bridge crossing the movement is shaped as Santos-Dumont's 14-bis biplane, its lower wing sweeping over an engraved globe. Openworked Cartier movements normally hide their references in Roman numeral bridges. This one does not hide anything.

The case is yellow gold with black lacquer running the flanks and bezel, a combination Cartier reserves for pieces that need to look older than they are. It works. The watch reads as a Deco object rather than a contemporary one.

Wearing it is the surprise. Santos-Dumont cases are thin and short in the lug, so a piece that photographs as a statement sits flat and quiet under a cuff. The blue suede strap here is doing deliberate work against the gold.

Skeleton Santos-Dumont production is limited and the gold-and-lacquer versions are the ones that hold. Cartier's collector market has reorganised itself in the last five years around exactly this kind of piece: shaped, historically anchored, and not a diver.