GOLDEN HOURS

The first timekeepers may not have been cased in any precious metal but, given how precious time is, gold and silver soon made their marks here

If you know anything at all about watches, both the history of the trade and fine watchmaking as it is today, then you know that gold has been making time shine for centuries. In a happy coincidence for Swiss watchmaking, the nation is the world's largest processor of gold, responsible for approximately 70% of this work for the entire world. To zero in on one example as an illustration, China is the world's biggest producer of raw gold ore. In 2022, it imported more than 500 metric tonnes of finished gold bars from Switzerland. While this fact is merely a continuation of a previous segment - a segue if you will it should remind us all that there is a lot of subtlety, nuance and depth here.

Also as noted elsewhere in this special section, gold is a fantastic material to work with. It has been with watchmaking for centuries, although the first examples of table clocks and pocket watches are thought to have been in more utilitarian materials. This is hardly surprising since clockwork was both functional and ornamental once upon a time, and even today, gold has aesthetic, functional and symbolic uses (see elsewhere in this segment). While official sources on the first gold personal timekeepers is scant, materials scientist and former NZZ editor L.F. Trueb advanced the notion (in 2000) that Queen Elizabeth 1's bracelet watch might have been one of the earliest examples of the use of gold in watchmaking. The timekeeper was thought to be a gift from the Earl of Leicester Robert Dudley but the only details available are a vague description - the actual watch is lost to history.