Saturday, August 29, 2009

Crownless watches

Oops, every time when I'm thinking that I've found the most rare crown position, I'm about to discover one more pearl in the sand.

And today I'd like to tell you about crown-less watches. No, not like quartz ones without crown, but mechanical ones without crown. At all.

No crown. While it might be not so rare design approach nowadays -- frankly speaking I never looked into it -- it probably still pretty hard to spot around. A good and descriptive representative in this group would be a Hardwood watches, that started in early 1920's. They got rid of crown at all, using the kinetic energy of the wrist for winding and using a rotating bezel as a setting mechanism. I believe all of the Hardwood watches are using the same design principle, but I'd like mention the Hardwood Steel 516.10.11 here.

- Hardwood Steel

Hopefully, this one is not the end of my challenge, but just a start of hunting down the rare and unusual crown positions. :)

See the complete list of crowns on watches here in my blog.