Exceptional Driva “Repeater”, rectangular hour and quarter repeater, with glossy black and gold galvanic dial, extremely rare 18Kt yellow gold case, in-house manual winding caliber No. 8, from the late 1930s.
CARACTÉRISTIQUES TECHNIQUES
18Kt yellow gold case measuring 23mm x 49mm
Hour and quarter repeater complication
Cristal en plastique original
Couronne originale
Driva No. 8″ movement inside
ANALYSE
Sometimes you have the rare opportunity to come across a watch that is exceptional in its aesthetic beauty, rarity, and state of preservation. This Driva “Reapeater” is what you’re looking for on your journey. Not all enthusiasts are familiar with this ingenious watch, much less with the name Driva. It’s therefore necessary to organize and discipline the narrative of this horological masterpiece.
The Driva brand was founded by one of the sons of Achille Hirsch, an Alsatian watchmaker who moved to Switzerland and was active in La Chaux-de-Fonds since at least 1885, the year his name was first registered in association with that of fledgling watchmaking companies. His sons inherited their father’s technical and artisanal skills and, in turn, registered several trademarks and patents. In the late 1920s, Louis-René-Henri Hirsch founded “Compagnie des Montres Driva,” a company he would head until 1949. It immediately became active in the development of technological applications related to watchmaking, so much so that the very first patents filed were for self-winding wristwatches as early as 1931. In the Driva laboratories at 42 Léopold Roberta in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a wristwatch was developed in 1937 that introduced a sound complication capable of signaling both the hours and the quarters.
The repeater complication was common in pocket watches at the time and was useful for telling the time even in low-light conditions or at night. The advanced version of this complication matured in the 19th century. While previously, the chimes were produced by a hammer striking a pivot on the case or the movement’s side plate, in 1804 the standard variant with a circular ring and impact hammer designed by John Moseley Elliott (patent no. 2,759) was introduced, which is still familiar to us today. But designing and then producing a watch with this complication at a relatively low cost was the challenge Driva accepted and realized in 1937 with his “Repeater.” This was a significant achievement, as integrating an acoustic function into an object of such compact dimensions required particularly careful design solutions. The goal was to achieve a reliable and durable system without compromising its constructional simplicity, thus making it suitable for mass production.
The project stood out precisely for this balance: a simple mechanism, designed to reduce the number of components and maintain a linear operating logic, comparable to that of traditional repeaters but with the practicality of a wristwatch format.
Technically, the movement features a tonneau shape measuring 15.5mm x 24mm, on which an additional rectangular plate dedicated to the striking system is mounted, with the ring or gong shaped to follow the movement’s peripheral profile. This caliber operated regularly on a time-only basis and activated the hour and quarter repeater by operating a small lever located at 1 o’clock: simply pulling it downwards was enough to literally hear the time.
The launch of this first repeating wristwatch was accompanied by a targeted and extensive marketing campaign, but ultimately only a few thousand pieces were produced (an estimated 1,500 in total) because production costs remained high and the company’s margins remained too low. It is also due to this limited production and therefore their precarious availability that they are today considered very rare watches.
This example with its yellow gold case in unparalleled condition could be the most beautiful and rare ever seen.
It has an immaculate dial with a galvanic surface finish. The clean gold graphics emerge from the glossy black background in a typical Driva “Repeater” configuration: Arabic numerals at the hours are set within two frames, the outermost one forming a railway line. The layout ends with the characteristic four outer notches marking the quarter hours and serving as the repeater complication, which can be both heard and seen for a multi-sensory experience. The hour and minute hands are gold-colored and have an “alpha” shape.
The extremely rare 18K yellow gold case is rectangular and curved to sinuously embrace the wrist. Its upper surface is mirror-polished while the sides are finely brushed. It is in truly exceptional condition.
Inside this small gold ingot is the rare Driva No. 8″ movement. It has 15 jewels, a straight-line lever escapement, a cut bimetallic compensation balance, and a blued steel flat hairspring.
