The Scherb Family Reverso

A two-tone gold Reverso, on a brown leather strap, engraved with a cormorant holding a fish in its beak — the private coat of arms of the Scherb family of Basel, per Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own heritage volume, in a chapter titled “Heraldry for Beginners.” The book explains the charge directly: the cormorant with a fish alludes to the family’s ancestral livelihood as fishermen on the Rhine. The same page illustrates the arms of the Vallée de Joux itself — combining a bear, a monk, and crossed weapons and keys, emblems typical of the municipalities in JLC’s own home valley — as a point of comparison between a civic coat of arms and a genuine private family one like the Scherbs’.