Jaeger-LeCoultre

The Paris International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts was a special exposition held from April 29 to November 8, 1925. The Exhibition unveiled to its 16 million visitors novel ideas of the international avant-garde in the fields of architecture and applied arts and gave birth to the Art Movement we know of as Art Deco today.

The Paris Exposition accomplished its ultimate goal, showing that Paris holds the undisputed crown in the decorative arts. While the term 'Art Deco' was not yet used, the years immediately following the Exposition, saw the same aesthetic from the exhibition copied around the world in the towering skyscrapers of New York, the ocean liners crossing the Atlantic, and the Royal residences in Tokyo.

The frenzy extended to designs in fashion, jewelry, furniture, glass, and textiles and other decorative arts. The present watch with the contrast of two-toned gold against polished onyx, its symmetry and simplicity of form, perfectly exemplifies the Art Deco aesthetic from the Paris Exhibition.

Consigned directly by the descendant of the original owner, the watch was purchased before the Paris Exhibition ended at the insistence of its original owner. Retailed by the famed Lucerne jeweler E. Gübelin, the movement was crafted by Edmund Jaeger's joint venture with Maison Cartier: European Watch and Clock Co. Inc, most renown for pushing boundaries on creating ultra thin watches.