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Jaeger-LeCoultre

270.8.62, REVERSO GRANDE TAILLE

$5,250

A Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Grande Taille, ref. 270.8.62, in stainless steel at 42mm by 26mm.

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A Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Grande Taille, ref. 270.8.62, in stainless steel at 42mm by 26mm. The silver dial is built in two layers: a guilloche centre that ripples as light crosses it, framed by a chapter ring of black Arabic numerals. Blued steel hands sweep over it, and a small seconds keeps its own time at six. Three gadroons cross the case at top and bottom, the Art Deco signature the Reverso has carried since 1931. Inside is the hand-wound calibre 822, just 2.94mm thin and made of 134 parts, with 45 hours of reserve. Swing the case over in its cradle and the dial gives way to a plain sheet of brushed steel. It sits on a steel bracelet with a signed deployant clasp.

On 4 March 1931, the engineer René-Alfred Chauvot filed a French patent for a watch that could slide within its frame and turn completely upon itself. The story goes that it began on the polo fields of India, where players kept breaking the crystals of their watches mid-match. César de Trey bought the rights, and that November he and Jacques-David LeCoultre founded the company that brought the Reverso to market. They named it from the Latin for "I turn around," and the plain back became a canvas: early advertisements showed it carrying initials, crests and monograms. Production paused in the late 1960s and returned in 1982. The Grande Taille followed around the sixtieth anniversary in 1991, when a larger case was needed, and ref. 270.8.62 is its steel, hand-wound, small seconds form.

We sourced it for the moment the case turns. It slides, it flips, and nearly a century of design history clicks shut in your hand. Turn it back and the dial is waiting: guilloche rippling at the centre, numerals in a ring, blued hands that flash between black and blue as the angle changes. The small seconds at six gives the whole face a quiet pulse. The 822 is hand wound and under three millimetres thin, which is exactly why the case can stay so flat. On its steel bracelet the Grande Taille reads like architecture, all straight lines and gadroons. Curated with intent.