What Taylor Swift can teach us about restoring vintage watches
And what she might think about this $300k Tank Cintree
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Back in April, we ran the story of the Cartier Tank Cintrée gifted by actor Fred Astaire to English jockey and horse trainer Felix Leach Jr. Astaire gifted a beautiful, bold Cintrée to his friend, Leach Jr., likely on the birth of his first child, engraving the case back “Felix from Fred ‘29.”
The Leach/Astaire Cintrée is basically one-of-a-kind, set apart by its dial, featuring large, luminous Arabic numerals. On the already bold Cintrée, which measures 46mm from lug to lug, the luminous numerals — and cathedral hands — have a striking effect.
At some point in the past few decades, Cartier acquired, and eventually restored, the Leach/Astaire Cintrée. We know this because it first appeared at auction in the 1980s with the original, badly patinated dial.
The numerals, originally radium, were faithfully restored, not with lume, but with paint. The restoration was likely done for aesthetic reasons back then. As Charlie Dunne wrote in that piece:
In the period of its sale, the adamancy for untouched cases and original dials was not as pronounced as it is today. The Cartier image and perception is very much one of refined luxury. This brand image differs from say, Longines, which might embrace a ‘damaged dial’ due to the fact these timepieces were true tools. So this raises the question of whether the decision was appropriate in hindsight.
In regards to a watch such as this Cintrée, undoubtedly we will see polarizing viewpoints. While the argument could be made that the dial, in original condition, did not fit within the Cartier aesthetic, the counterargument would strongly appeal to the importance of preservation.
Charlie points to a potential alternative restoration approach: When Vacheron Constantin restored the rare “Don Pancho” minute repeater, which had a similarly damaged original radium dial upon its discovery, the original dial was preserved and sold along with a manufactured replacement dial to allow the option for the watch to remain as original as possible.
After that article, a collector actually reached out to us, sending a few photos of a Tank Cintrée in white gold with the same striking dial as the one gifted by Fred Astaire. As that individual explained, this dial was also faithfully restored by Cartier in the past few years.
On Thanksgiving, that same watch, a white gold Cartier Tank Cintree with luminous Arabic numerals sold for about $290k at Phillips Hong Kong. The catalog entry makes heavy reference to the Leach/Astaire Cintrée, saying that example is the only known luminous dial in yellow gold, and this example at Philips is the only known in white gold.
Here’s how Phillips describes this watch’s restoration in the catalog entry: “For two years, the watch was left in the dedicated hands of its maker with instruction to restore the dial, hands and case based on the original archive of Cartier with the techniques used in the 1930s, with the only exception being the use of modern luminous material as opposed to radium.”
Not a cheap restoration, in other words.
No doubt, it’s an extremely rare and important watch, and it’s exciting to see the example come to auction a few months after our article about a similar example.
But the question remains: What’s the proper way to treat these old, damaged watches (especially those with radium dials)?
Listen, it’s the (perhaps unfortunate) reality that many of these beautiful watches will need to be restored to be considered “collectible” by modern standards. The Cintrée examples we’re talking about here are nearly 100 years old, and looking at the unrestored version of the Astaire/Leache Cintrée above, there’s no way that watch sells for nearly $300k like this restored example did.
I remember it all too well
Now for the “what can Taylor Swift teach us about watch restoration” portion of today’s ‘sletter. For those who have retreated from the world, Taylor has been re-recording and re-releasing her first six albums so that she can reclaim full ownership of her music catalog. This month, she re-released Red (Taylor’s Version), featuring the exact same tracklist as the original album, along with a few bonus tracks “from the vault.”
The re-released Red is an exact re-creation of the original album, along with a few aesthetic flourishes (anyone else still crying from the 10-minute version of “All Too Well”?). It’s Taylor reclaiming her history and “restoring” it to make it enjoyable (not to mention profitable for her) for years to come.
Cartier’s (and other manufacturers’) restoration of their vintage watches isn’t dissimilar from Taylor’s re-recording of her classic albums. It’s Cartier reclaiming its history by restoring — in what it feels is a faithful way — so its original designs can continue to be appreciated for years to come. If Cartier didn’t go through the effort of restoring this Cintrée, it’s unlikely anyone pays much attention to it, or that it sells at auction for $300k, blowing past its $40-80k estimate. Even worse, the watch might end up terribly restored by some other third party, completely losing its historical connection to the Maison.
When we spoke to the TrueDome creators — the guys going through the painstaking process of re-creating vintage acrylic Rolex crystals — one thing they said stuck out to me. They said their goal was to arrive at a crystal that allows the watch’s design to be appreciated the way its engineers originally intended.
To me, that’s the true beauty of these things. Not the aesthetic beauty in and of itself. Lots of things are aesthetically beautiful. It’s the beauty of appreciating an object as it was originally designed and created, all those years ago. Yes, this allows some room for faithful restoration. But it also makes one appreciate all the more when an old object like this is found in completely original condition.
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