Girard-Perregaux 17 Jewels Small Seconds

Reference: Unknown Crystal: Likely acrylic (to be confirmed) Dial: Silver two-tone dial with a finely textured outer section and smooth central field, applied gold-tone baton hour markers and matching gold-tone hands. Subsidiary seconds at 6 o'clock with concentric decoration. Functions: Hours, minutes and subsidiary seconds Strap: Black leather strap

A beautifully restrained vintage Girard-Perregaux from around the 1950s, and another watch in this group that feels distinctly more special than its market value might suggest.

The design is classic mid-century Swiss watchmaking: a slim round case, long elegant lugs, gold-tone applied markers and hands, and a traditional small-seconds display at 6 o'clock. What makes this example particularly attractive is the dial, with its combination of a smooth central section and finely textured outer ring. It gives an otherwise very simple watch considerably more character when seen up close.

The 17-jewel manual-wind movement and subsidiary seconds are exactly the sort of traditional mechanical arrangement I enjoy in a watch of this period. There is nothing unnecessary here; it is simply an elegant mechanical wristwatch from one of Switzerland's important historic manufacturers.

Girard-Perregaux is a name with considerably more watchmaking pedigree than the prices of many of its vintage pieces would suggest. That makes watches like this particularly appealing to me: excellent design, genuine history and traditional Swiss watchmaking without the premium attached to some of the more fashionable vintage names.