(Bloomberg) -- 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 Dec. 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.
As Swiss watch brands began to bring case production in-house, Dennison shuttered in 1967 until, in 2010, the director and co-founder of Watches of Knightsbridge, Toby Sutton, registered the trademark for its name. In 2016, following investment from Dubai-based watch connoisseur Mohammed Al Bulooki, the vintage timepiece expert introduced a limited-edition collection called the Denco53. It was a field watch inspired by the one Hillary wore during his Everest summit.
Sutton manufactured the Denco53 cases in the UK, on original Dennison machines, which he’d located through a friend who’d bought them years earlier. The Denco53 was met with enthusiasm, and all 50 watches—priced from $3,500 to $4,050—sold.
It wasn’t enough to keep the project active, though. “Due to the cost of manufacturing them in the UK, and the low production capacity, I felt it was not the right time to pursue this further,” Sutton says. “But Mohammed and I always felt that if we could find the right partners and team that share the same passion, that we could bring Dennison back properly.” In 2023 they locked in those partners: investor and watch expert Ovais Merchant; Pierre-Alexandre Aeschlimann, president and chief executive officer of independent watch brand Andersen Genève; and industry veteran Stéphane Cheikh.
The team tapped Emmanuel Gueit, designer of Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak Offshore and the Rolex 1908 collection, to lead the design of the second relaunch. Gueit looked to Dennison’s watch case history but also to the work of his father, another influential watch designer who happened to be responsible for introducing stone dials to Piaget. “When I started studying the history of Dennison, I saw that they stopped producing in the ’60s,” Gueit says. “I said to everyone, ‘We need to design a watch that looks like it’s from the ’60s, that picks up where the brand originally stopped.’”
“We also wanted them to be financially accessible,” says Aeschlimann. To achieve all this, they committed to a Swiss quartz movement, rather than the more complicated mechanical movements of the past. The A.L.D. collection cases are composed of stainless steel and gold-plated PVD.
“We plan to launch an evolution of the current model within the next six months and then a completely new model with a different case within a year,” Sutton says. “The focus is on case design and producing interesting and elegant watches.” As for their mechanical history, Sutton says they’ll likely revive that as well, “most likely in a precious-metal case and very limited,” he adds. “Dennison made many solid silver cases in the early 20th century, which would be a cool thing to bring back.”
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