The “Wimbledon” Cloisonné Enamel Reverso

A stainless steel Reverso (case No. 24624) whose cloisonné enamel dial depicts a tennis player against a green grass ground — read by specialists as a Wimbledon reference, since a closely related dial with a red clay ground (read as Roland Garros) is separately documented. The dial is stamped 104*009 on its edge, in the numbering system used by Stern Frères, the Geneva firm that supplied cloisonné dials to Patek Philippe, Rolex, Omega and Jaeger-LeCoultre alike — 104 is Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own house code in that system, and the digits after the star identify the specific design. A comparable clay-ground “tennis” dial sold at Christie’s in 2018 for more than CHF 50,000; the green-grass version here was, as far as the consignor could establish, the first of its kind to appear at auction at all.