Tiffany & Co. Chronograph by Waldan International

Although this watch has Tiffany & Co. on the dial, its story belongs to one man: Oscar Waldan.

Waldan—a Polish Jew—was forced into concentration camps upon Nazi Germany’s invasion of his native country. At Buchenwald, he became close to Manek, the camp’s watchmaker. In Waldan, Manek recognized the curiosity that had driven him to take apart his father’s pocket watch as a boy; from Manek, Waldan learned the skills that would see him through the horrors he witnessed in the camp.

After the war, Waldan spent a brief period in a camp for displaced persons before coming to America in 1946. The privations of the war years engendered in him a hunger to succeed. Success soon came to him, and his talents attracted the attention of Tissot, who employed him as a designer; one of his creations was the Tissot Navigator World Time, which was recently reissued by the brand.

All the while he worked, quietly and diligently, but his flair for design attracted the attention of luminaries in the watch world. Other commissions followed, from Universal Genève (where he worked as Vice President of Merchandising and Styling), Van Cleef & Arpels, and Tiffany & Co. By the 1970s, he had, in his own words, a desire to “make something under my own name.”

So in the late 1970s he founded Waldan International.

During that decade, another event happened that would change the course of his career. Following the creation of the El Primero movement, Zenith entered a period of economic hardship. Faced with having to shut the doors of its factory in Port-de-Martel for good, Zenith was sold in 1971 to American-based Zenith Radio Corporation. The corporation—which was the biggest name in television and radio at the time—had wanted to expand its product line into quartz watches. Although Zenith continued to produce mechanical chronographs (including retro-futuristic models like the A781), in 1975 the powers-that-be ceased production of the El Primero and resolved to sell off all the parts and equipment that went into making it.

Were it not for Charles Vermot, Zenith’s chief movement designer, the El Primero would have been relegated to the past. But Vermot secreted parts, plans, and tools—including 150 presses—in an attic in the factory. There they lay until 1978, when Zenith Radio Corporation sold the watch manufacture to the Dixi Group.

Fortunately, the new owners of Zenith believed in the renaissance of mechanical watches, and thanks to Vermot, the presses that he had hidden away in the attic turned out the El Primero once more. Other brands soon picked up the movement, including Ebel, which did so at Waldan’s behest. Waldan also bought some movements for his own company, and began to produce them for brands like Ulysse Nardin, Asprey, Tourneau, and Tiffany.

This watch, although not sporting the El-Primero movement, carries the same design ethos of its Zenith based counterparts. Under the hood, we find a just as venerable Valjoux 72 based manually wound movement, cased in an elegant 36mm 18K yellow gold case, featuring an unsigned crown and a stunning champagne triple calendar moonphase dial. 

If you're not looking to shell out seven figures for a Patek 2499, this may be the next best thing!

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