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Bloomberg Published December 16, 2024 Reading time
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Inexpensive watches arrive with design DNA from Piaget and Rolex

By
Bloomberg Published
December 16, 2024

In late October the defunct British-American watch brand Dennison was revived—for a second time. The new iteration came in the form of a series of 11 slender quartz timepieces, some with natural stone dials, in a round-cornered, rectangular case that references one produced by historic casemaker Dennison in the late 1920s. The brand calls its new line of $490-to-$690 watches A.L.D., after the man who founded the first version of the company 175 years ago, Aaron Lufkin Dennison.

At the Phillips TimeForArt 2024 auction on December 7, Dennison presented a one-of-a-kind variation of an A.L.D. to benefit the Swiss Institute. Although estimated at $400 to $600, the piece fetched $5,080. “Clients from all over the world competed fiercely for this unique example featuring a stunning geometric dial and unusual blue-gold PVD steel case,” says Paul Boutros, Phillips’ deputy chairman and head of watches for the Americas. So we looked into what was behind that frenzy.

Originally founded in Birmingham, England, by an American watchmaker and serial entrepreneur, Dennison Watch Co. manufactured cases for Rolex, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Omega, Longines and many others. Because of their durability and water resistance, Dennison provided cases for the John Purser & Sons Ltd. of Cardiff watch that Sir Ernest Shackleton wore during his 1913 expedition to Antarctica, as well as the Rolex Oyster Perpetual that Sir Edmund Hillary wore on his 1953 summit of Mount Everest.