For 2024, watchmaker Eberhard & Co. has released an interesting collection of watches known as the Chronographe 1887 family. The collection comprises a 250-piece limited edition and a non-limited version with an automatic (as opposed to manually wound) movement. Eberhard & Co. offers a few different dial colors for both the limited and standard-production model Chronographe 1887s, though it is a bit confusing to specifically determine how many dials there are. On the brand’s website (and when I met with the company), Eberhard & Co. only displays the black- or white-dial versions. The technical specifications, however, discuss more dials, including four dials for the Chronographe 1887 Automatic and three different dials for the manually wound Chronographe 1887 Limited Edition. It is further unclear if the limited edition is 250 pieces total, or 250 pieces per dial color. Despite the confusion, these watches are pretty lovely in a classic way.
Eberhard & Co. was founded in 1887. The company has always specialized in tool watches, but also watches that look pretty while indicating the time. Accordingly, these chronographs are meant to evoke a sense of timeless style and functional excellence in a package that is more fashionable than it is novel or experimental.
All of the Chronographe 1887 watches feature 41.5mm-wide polished and brushed steel cases, which are meant to evoke the feeling of classic hand-held stopwatches. The cases are designed in a “semi-monopusher” style, with one visible chronograph pusher and one that is built into the crown. This is not totally unique, but not particularly common in new watches, and is barely represented in the market today. The limited edition reference 31081 Chronographe 1887 models have a slightly thinner case that is 13.9mm thick. This is because they contain a manually wound movement, so the removal of the automatic rotor helps shave off a bit of thickness. The automatic non-limited Chronographe 1887 cases, meanwhile, are 14.4mm thick. There is a domed AR-coated sapphire crystal over the dials.
What is it about these vintage instrument dials that somehow feels interesting and elegant today? No doubt, when these “spiral dial” chronographs first came out, people complained that they were too busy. Now 150 or so years (first such dials appeared on pocket watches and then later on wristwatches starting in perhaps the 1930s) later, they look mature and classy by comparison. Why do we like these retro-sport watch dial faces? At least for me, I think it begins with the elegant yet formal hour markers (the Arabic numeral ones on the automatic models are my favorite), and the bold hands that still have eye-pleasing designs. Those elements alone are enjoyable to look at. The busy, complicated dials just feel too esoteric to spend that much visual effort on. They don’t bother our eyes, because we mostly ignore them as it becomes background decoration. No one in the last half-century has needed any of those scales, so they blend in as decorative background noise when placed on modern timepieces. We like knowing that someone, somewhere would have used such numbers, but take comfort in knowing that we will never have to bother ourselves mastering such tedious calculations. But we still enjoy wearing the tool that measures them.
The movement inside the Eberhard & Co. Chronographe 1887 is known as the Calibre EB 280 (manually wound) or EB 380 (automatic) depending on how it is configured. The movement is produced for Eberhard & Co. by Sellita, and they are based on the company’s AMT 5100 chronograph movements that have a column-wheel transmission and flyback system for the chronograph. The movements operate at 4Hz with about 58 hours of power reserve. The manually-wound version is really just the automatic movement with the self-winding system removed. In place of it, Eberhard applies a shield-style plate on the movement (which is visually reminiscent of its logo).
At the end of the day, what makes the Chronographe 1887 watches nice is their style and their quirks. Something about Eberhard & Co. always feels a bit more Italian than Swiss (because of who works there, of course), and accordingly, its watches have personality on top of competence. The bold presence and retro visuals of these watches are fun and handsome. They are both conservative and maximalist, both contemporary and vintage, both basic and complicated. Those interesting inherent contradictions make Eberhard’s best watches so beguiling, and that is certainly true for many of the new Chronographe 1887 watches as both the non-limited reference 31082 and the limited 31081. The Eberhard & Co. Chronographe 1887 Limited Edition is priced at 7,800 Swiss Francs, while the Eberhard & Co. Chronographe 1887 Automatic is priced at 6,570 Swiss Francs. Learn more at the Eberhard & Co. website.
