The “Maharani” Reverso

The earliest documented enamelled Reverso: a yellow-gold case carrying a miniature enamel portrait of an Indian woman. It was bought in Mumbai by a Lufthansa captain during the 1990s and entered the manufacture’s own collection in 2004. Research across Indian and Swiss archives points to Kanchan Prabha Devi — born 1914, eldest daughter of the Maharaja of Panna, who on her seventeenth birthday became the second wife of the Maharaja of Tripura, a princely state near what is now the Bangladesh border. The identification has never been proved beyond doubt, and the watch remains the most enigmatic of the early Reversos.