Every back
tells a story.

Among the earliest documented personalised Reversos, engraved with a map and route commemorating Italo Balbo’s mass transatlantic formation flight to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. Barely two years after the patent, the blank steel back was already being used to record history rather than merely survive it.

Source: Time and Watches; JLC Heritage

A blue-dialled Reverso Standard, one of a set given in 1932 to the players of Lausanne-Sports after the club won the 1931–32 Swiss championship — each case engraved with the club’s initials and the individual player’s name, distributed through Spécialités Horlogères S.A. This particular watch belonged to Roger Feutz, the team’s goalkeeper, known to Swiss football fans as “le gardien acrobate” (the acrobat goalkeeper); he died in 2003 at 94. The Reverso itself was barely a year old at the time — among the earliest recorded examples of what would now be called a sports sponsorship in watchmaking. The piece surfaced publicly only in 2025, rediscovered and exhibited by Maison Riondet at FAB Paris, and appears in neither the standard reference works nor Manfred Fritz’s otherwise exhaustive Reverso — La légende vivante.

Source: Montres de Luxe, July 2025; Maison Riondet, FAB Paris 2025

A yellow gold Reverso Grande Taille whose case-back reproduces the main marble staircase of Venice’s Scuola Grande di San Rocco — the confraternity house famous for its Tintoretto cycle, whose restoration Jaeger-LeCoultre has sponsored since 2013. Unveiled at the 73rd Mostra (Venice Film Festival), the piece works almost entirely in a narrow band of stone-grey tones, since the marble subject left little room for colour contrast; the straight architectural lines fought the curved case surface throughout, and the firing process flattened the marble’s texture more than expected. Three weeks of work, 32 dryings at 230°C, and 15 firings at 800°C. Announced alongside a Facebook campaign — each “like” during one week in September 2016 triggered a donation toward the restoration — which drew over 2,500 likes and led to a final €15,000 gift to the Scuola.

Source: MasterHorologer, Sept 2016; MyWatch EN, Sept 2016; Luxsure, Sept 2016

A Reverso Classic Medium engraved with a heart, freehand-drawn by actress Carmen Chaplin — granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin and a Jaeger-LeCoultre ambassador — as the opening gesture of the same San Rocco restoration campaign above. At the manufacture’s lounge during the 2016 Venice Film Festival, guests were invited to sketch a heart in a digital guestbook to pledge support for the restoration; Chaplin’s sketch was the first, and the one chosen to be engraved onto this watch. Actress Zhao Wei and other guests contributed sketches of their own to the same project.

Source: Luxsure, Sept 2016

Not a single watch but a bespoke engraving offered exclusively through Lionel Meylan’s boutique in Vevey, on any Reverso the client chooses: the instantly recognisable silhouette of Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, seen from behind — bowler hat, cane, oversized trousers, turned-out feet. The idea came from Julien Meylan and was approved by the Chaplin family and by Bubbles Inc., which controls the Chaplin estate; Vevey and neighbouring Corsier-sur-Vevey were Chaplin’s home for his final decades, and the Manoir de Ban there, now a museum, counts Jaeger-LeCoultre as a partner. Chaplin’s daughter Annie Chaplin has called the result “an imprint of the eternal Vagabond created with class, luxury, and finesse.”

Source: Lionel Meylan, 2026

A red heart lacquered across the entire case-back, made for a 2011 campaign timed to the Reverso’s 80th anniversary and the 68th Venice Film Festival, in support of Emergency’s Salam Centre for cardiac surgery in Khartoum, Sudan. Photographer Valeria Golino shot friends, colleagues, and her then-partner Riccardo Scamarcio wearing the watch with a hand over the heart for a Vanity Fair Italia portfolio titled “Il cuore è altrove” (“The Heart Is Elsewhere”) — Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Patricia Arquette, Ferzan Özpetek and Isabella Ferrari among them — before the watches appeared on the Venice red carpet. Jaeger-LeCoultre committed to funding ten cardiac operations at the Salam Centre, one for each night of the ten-night festival; the watches themselves were never for sale. Emergency’s own 2011 financial report records that Jaeger-LeCoultre later donated three examples — catalogued at Christie’s as lots 312–314, sold without reserve or premium for the charity’s benefit, one identified as a steel Grande Reverso Ultra Thin, ref. Q2788520, its back in red lacquer with the Salam Centre logo. The idea plays on the Reverso’s own origin story: a case built to protect a mechanical heart, turned instead into a message about protecting human ones.

Source: Vanity Fair Italia, 24 Aug 2011; Emergency Annual Report 2011; Christie’s, May 2012

The following year’s chapter of the same partnership: a red rose in lacquer, its stem forming the word “for” as it runs toward Emergency’s circled-E emblem — “A Rose for Emergency,” spelled out entirely in one image, with no maison or festival branding anywhere on the case-back. Made for the 69th Venice Film Festival in support of Emergency’s maternity centre in Anabah, Afghanistan, surrounded by the rose garden that gave the campaign its symbol; actress Cristiana Capotondi, the project’s patron, visited the centre that July. Jaeger-LeCoultre funded the centre for the length of the festival, timed to the roughly ten births a day the centre was seeing — over 100 expected across the festival’s run. Men’s and women’s Grande Reverso Ultra Thin versions were made; Emergency’s 2012 annual report confirms two were donated by Jaeger-LeCoultre and later sold at auction, with proceeds going entirely to the Anabah centre.

Source: Emergency Annual Report 2012; Jaeger-LeCoultre press materials, Aug 2012

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.

Source: Auction house cataloguing, cloisonné tennis dial group

A steel Staybrite Reverso (case No. 467193) whose cloisonné enamel dial — stamped 104*014, the “tennis player” design in the Stern Frères numbering system — shares its maker with the Wimbledon-ground dial elsewhere in this archive. The case-back is engraved “Roland Garros 1952,” alongside a facsimile signature of René Lacoste and Lacoste’s crocodile emblem; Lacoste, a former French Open champion himself, had founded his clothing house in 1933 and was closely tied to the tournament. Auction house research considers it highly probable, though unconfirmed, that Lacoste presented this specific watch to that year’s men’s singles champion, the Czech player Jaroslav Drobný — who also won Roland Garros the year before, in 1951, and Wimbledon in 1954. Named for the aviator and WWI hero, the Roland Garros stadium was built in 1928 for France’s first Davis Cup entry.

Source: Christie’s lot notes, Reverso Roland Garros 1952

A steel Reverso, ref. 1101 (case No. 25027, movement No. 74350), fitted at some later point with a cloisonné enamel dial depicting a polo player in action — an appropriate choice for a case shape born on the polo field, even though the dial itself was added after the watch’s 1937 manufacture rather than at the factory. Runs the octagonal-shaped, nickel-finished calibre 411 with 15 jewels and a rotating sweep centre-seconds disc built into the rectangular back-plate, a genuinely unusual complication for the period. The case-back carries engraved initials “AJ,” whose owner is not otherwise documented.

Source: Auction house cataloguing, ref. 1101

A Grande Taille wristwatch carrying the same Topaz miniature that Jaeger-LeCoultre also produced as one of four jewelled Reverso pocket watches in its “Pierres Précieuses” set (catalogued elsewhere in this archive) — reproducing Alfons Mucha’s 1900 lithograph The Precious Stones: Topaz, one of four panels personifying gemstones as women, alongside Ruby, Amethyst and Emerald. Whether this wrist version was ever offered for sale, or exists only as an archive/prototype example held by the manufacture itself, isn’t established by any source found so far; it’s catalogued here as a unique piece for that reason, distinct from the four confirmed pocket watches. Almost certainly built on the same Grande Taille platform as the contemporary Mucha Four Seasons watches — 18k yellow gold, manual movement, white enamel dial, small seconds — though this specific reference has not been confirmed.

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre archive photography

Four Grande Taille Reversos shown at the Geneva watch fair (SIHH) in 2003, each case-back enamelled with a miniature reproduction of a different painting by Tamara de Lempicka, the Art Deco portraitist — and, unlike almost everything else in this archive, never produced for sale at all. One collector who saw them has written that he has “forever dreamed” of the set since. Pieces like this exist in Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own accumulated stock of enamel work for reasons that have nothing to do with commerce: some are works in progress, others demonstration pieces the manufacture keeps specifically to show at exhibitions, since reproducing a painting in enamel miniature demands that the enameller match not just the original artist’s draughtsmanship at a fraction of the scale, but the exact colour of the source work as well. Individual titles for the four Lempicka paintings reproduced are not documented in the source describing them.

Source: Collector account, SIHH 2003

A steel Reverso built around a double dial with a 24-hour display, its specially made blue starburst dial mapping the stars of the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) across the face rather than showing a conventional astronomical complication. Case No. 2’190’694, dated by Christie’s to circa 2000. The kind of one-off constellation dial that turns a Reverso into something closer to a wearable star chart than a watch.

Source: Christie’s cataloguing, ref. 272’854

An 18k yellow gold reversible wristwatch with an enamelled coat of arms on the case-back, fitted with an 18k yellow gold deployant clasp signed by Cartier rather than Jaeger-LeCoultre — a detail auction cataloguing leaves unexplained, though rival maisons occasionally supplied straps, clasps or cases for one another’s watches earlier in the 20th century, particularly when sold through shared retail or family connections.

Source: Antiquorum cataloguing, No. 185413

A steel Reverso with an enamelled coat of arms on the case-back, movement No. 17644, case No. 11215 — continuing, two decades on, the same personalisation tradition that produced the 1930s coat-of-arms Reversos elsewhere in this archive, this time on a steel rather than precious-metal case.

Source: Antiquorum cataloguing, movement no. 17644

A steel gentleman’s Reverso whose case-back carries a red and yellow polychrome enamel coat of arms set against a black ground — paired with an extensible steel bracelet decorated with black onyx plates, an unusually decorative bracelet treatment for a 1930s sports watch. Coat-of-arms Reversos from this decade are typically documented with plain leather straps; the onyx-plated bracelet here is a genuine rarity within that group.

Source: Antiquorum cataloguing, 1930s

A yellow gold Reverso whose case-back carries an oval medallion reading “WIENER CERCLE” around a standing knight in armour bearing a flag — almost certainly the badge of a Vienna gentlemen’s club or circle (“cercle” being French for “circle” or club) active in the interwar period. One of a set of nine 1930s Reversos photographed together and published on page 78 of a Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage volume, in a chapter titled “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” captioned: “A fine collection of Reversos decorated with intricate, coloured coats of arms. All these examples date from the thirties.”

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” p.78

A steel Reverso whose case-back carries a red winged lion or griffin rampant on a pentagonal shield beneath a coronet, with a scrolled banner beneath reading “SANS PEUR” — French for “without fear.” That motto is best known as the war cry and clan motto of Clan Sutherland in Scotland, though the Sutherland crest badge is traditionally a wildcat rather than a griffin, so the match isn’t certain; “Sans Peur” has also been used as a motto by other families and regiments over the centuries. One of nine 1930s Reversos published together on page 78 of a Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage volume, “In Praise of Craftsmanship.”

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” p.78

A steel Reverso decorated with a Royal Navy badge: a running horse on a red oval, ringed with the lettering “O·H·M·S” (On His Majesty’s Service) above and “VICTORY” below, a royal crown at the top and a laurel wreath beneath framing the initials “R·N.” The wording all but confirms a direct connection to HMS Victory, Nelson’s Trafalgar flagship, permanently berthed at Portsmouth and also the name used for the Royal Navy’s Portsmouth shore establishment through the twentieth century — making this one of nine 1930s Reversos published together on page 78 of a Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage volume that is, unusually, tied to a specific, identifiable institution rather than an unattributed family or club.

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” p.78

A steel Reverso whose case-back carries a red shield bearing a white cross beneath a royal crown — the basic arms of the House of Savoy, adopted as the state arms of the Kingdom of Italy itself from unification in 1861 until the monarchy’s abolition in 1946. The shield sits inside a circular black-and-gold border carrying a repeating decorative or pseudo-lettered motif, in a style consistent with the collar of an Italian royal order (the Order of the Crown of Italy and the Military and Civil Orders of Savoy all used a red-and-white Savoy cross at their centre); which specific order, if any, isn’t confirmed from the photograph alone. One of nine 1930s Reversos published together on page 78 of a Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage volume, “In Praise of Craftsmanship.”

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” p.78

A steel Reverso carrying the historic crest of A.S. Roma, the Italian football club founded in 1927: the Capitoline Wolf suckling Romulus and Remus on a yellow field in the shield’s upper half, and the intertwined gold monogram “ASR” (Associazione Sportiva Roma) on red in the lower half. This is specifically the illustrated 1934 version of the crest, the same shield-and-wolf design the club reintroduced in 1997 and again in 2025’s “progressive return” to its historic badge — making this one of the more confidently identifiable pieces in the group of nine 1930s Reversos published together on page 78 of a Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage volume, “In Praise of Craftsmanship.” A separate page of the same volume, showing this watch again on a tan leather strap, confirms it is now part of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own museum collection.

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” p.78 and facing page; club crest history confirmed via multiple club and press sources

A steel Reverso whose case-back carries a crowned shield: a red band across the top bearing a crescent moon flanked by two mullets (heraldic stars), above a shield quartered diagonally in white and black, a small gold shield at its centre and a red lion in the lower field, with a scrolled ribbon beneath. Crescents and mullets together are a recurring device across a number of British family arms, but nothing in the source identifies which family or institution this specific combination belongs to. One of nine 1930s Reversos published together on page 78 of a Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage volume, “In Praise of Craftsmanship.”

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” p.78

A steel Reverso with a quartered shield alternating navy fields charged with gold rampant lions and red fields each charged with three silver bells, above a scrolled motto banner reading “NEC TIMIDE NEC TARDE” — roughly, “neither timidly nor slowly.” It closely echoes the better-documented Latin motto “Nec temere, nec timide” (“neither rashly nor timidly”), used historically by the town of Oswestry, the city of Gdańsk, and several British armigerous families including Bailey and Forbes — though none of those known arms match this specific lion-and-bell quartering, so the exact institution behind this version remains unconfirmed. One of nine 1930s Reversos published together on page 78 of a Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage volume, “In Praise of Craftsmanship.”

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” p.78

A steel Reverso with a shield divided into black-and-white lozenge-patterned quarters, three white herons or egrets standing in the upper and lower fields and three red roundels each centred with a white cinquefoil (five-petalled flower) across the middle band, above a scrolled banner reading “FIDELITER” — Latin for “faithfully.” “Fideliter” is a common heraldic motto used by numerous unrelated families and institutions, and herons are frequently used as canting (punning) charges for surnames like Heron or Herne, but nothing in the source narrows this to a specific one. One of nine 1930s Reversos published together on page 78 of a Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage volume, “In Praise of Craftsmanship.”

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” p.78

A steel Reverso engraved simply with the interlocked initials “MJ” inside a hexagonal outline — no enamel, no colour, no heraldry. Included in the same photographed group as the eight coat-of-arms Reversos elsewhere in this archive specifically as a contrast: the accompanying book text discusses both monograms and coats of arms as period decoration techniques, and this piece represents the plainer of the two. One of nine 1930s Reversos published together on page 78 of a Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage volume, “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” which quotes an unnamed technical textbook’s rule for engraving of any kind: “but above all, it must be beautiful.”

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “In Praise of Craftsmanship,” p.78

A steel Reverso engraved with a winged “ACS” emblem and the word “BASEL” beneath — a gift from the Aéroclub Suisse de Bâle (the Swiss Aero Club’s Basel chapter) to its “meritorious pilot,” Alphonse Kammacher, in 1933. Per the same Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage volume that documents it, the watch also carried the inscription “Mit Dank für die Siege” (“With thanks for the victories”), and its presentation was accompanied by the battle cry “On a gagné” (“We won”) — a piece of triumphalism the book notes “raised some eyebrows” given the tense European political climate of the early 1930s. Remarkably, the book reports that Sirio Vernati, a member of that same winning team, still wore the watch decades later, at the time of the book’s writing.

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “In Praise of Craftsmanship” (facing page 78)

A yellow gold Reverso, on a brown leather strap, engraved with an ornate armorial figure — a robed, staff-bearing figure set within scrollwork and grape-vine motifs. Per Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own heritage volume, the owner, who ran a small vineyard near Heidelberg, had the engraving copied directly from the artistic heraldic decoration already carved into the iron door of an old oak wine barrel that was “the pride of his cellar” — a barrel bearing the maker’s name “Seeger,” a date reading “1855 … 1955” and “500 Jahr,” and a German rhyming inscription roughly translating to “drinking makes you cheerful, so drink wine with God, and you will be cheerful and blessed your whole life long.” The book frames this as a demonstration of the Reverso’s flexibility as a canvas: rather than a family coat of arms or a club badge, this owner chose to reproduce the specific decorative emblem of an object he prized in his own life.

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication (chapter on personalisation, facing the “Heraldry for Beginners” chapter)

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’.

Source: Jaeger-LeCoultre heritage publication, “Heraldry for Beginners,” p.72

It bears the arms and motto of Eton College — Floreat Etona, “may Eton flourish”. And it is a ladies’ model. Eton admitted only male pupils, so the likeliest explanation is a gift from a pupil to a girlfriend, or a master to his wife. The archive has never established who owned it, which leaves open the far more romantic possibility the Yearbook itself entertains: that it belonged to the first female pupil at Eton, in the early 1930s.

Source: JLC Yearbook FIVE, 2012 — “Reverso Confidential”

The company archive holds a letter sent from Algiers in 1934 congratulating the maison on a Reverso that had withstood the conditions of southern Morocco. It was signed by a Danish prince who had traded a colonel’s commission in the Danish army for the French Foreign Legion, and who commanded legion corps in Morocco as capitaine à titre étranger. Proof, in the maison’s own files, that the Reverso was worn not only by sportsmen but by soldiers.

Source: JLC Yearbook FIVE, 2012

Engraved with a map of the Americas and the words MEXICO – NEW YORK, MAY 8 1935. Earhart had flown 1,126 km across the Gulf of Mexico along the edge of the Bermuda Triangle, completing the first Mexico–New York flight in 13 hours and 5 minutes. Two years later she disappeared over the Pacific at the height of her fame.

Source: JLC Yearbook FIVE, 2012

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.

Source: Foulkes, Reverso; JLC Yearbook FIVE

Engraved with the arms of the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II of Jaipur — moderniser of Rajasthan and a polo champion of international standing. Of all the personalised Reversos, this is the one that closes the circle most exactly: the watch invented on an Indian polo field, engraved for the man who was arguably the era’s greatest Indian polo player. LeCoultre calibre 410, steel.

Source: JLC Yearbook FIVE, 2012

The BRDC was founded in 1928 over a series of legendary dinners hosted by Dr J.D. Benjafield, after he and Sammy Davis won the 1927 Le Mans 24 Hours in a wrecked Bentley — repaired by torchlight, headlights replaced with a hand torch. The club’s emblem shows the Razor Blade, at 47 cm the narrowest racing car of its day. The link runs deeper than decoration: Jaeger supplied dashboard instruments to Bugatti, Bentley, Maserati, Panhard and Aston Martin’s predecessor Bamford & Martin.

Source: JLC Yearbook FIVE, 2012

Engraved with a crown, EDWARD VIII and the date 1937 — the year of a coronation that never happened. The ceremony had been set for 12 May 1937, which explains both the date and the crown. Edward abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson; the watch was engraved anyway and still carries the trace of a dream of grandeur that gave way to a love story.

Source: JLC Yearbook FIVE, 2012

An enamelled miniature of the Hindu deity Rama — hero of the Ramayana, in whom some Indian scholars see the ancestor of the Western fairy-tale prince. Shown by the Victoria and Albert Museum from 2009 in Maharaja: the Splendour of India’s Royal Courts, and a reminder that the Reverso’s relationship with the subcontinent never really ended.

Source: JLC Yearbook FIVE, 2012

Made for the Reverso’s 80th anniversary and decorated by Philippe Chappuis — “Zep”, creator of the comic Titeuf. Turning a small wheel above the crown opens two shutters to reveal the drawing beneath: Titeuf climbing inside the watch’s gear train, the artist’s nod to Chaplin in Modern Times. The image was reproduced in miniature enamel by one of the manufacture’s own enamellers, more than eighty hours of work. It was sold at Artcurial in Paris on 29 November 2011, with the proceeds going to the Association Monégasque contre les Myopathies.

Source: Artcurial, Jaeger-LeCoultre Unique Auction, Paris, 29 Nov 2011, lot 519

Bought from the retailer Gübelin by the Swiss Football Association and presented to the national side after the 1938 World Cup in France. Switzerland’s win over the Germany side carried unmistakable political weight in the Europe of 1938, and the watches went out inscribed with thanks for the victories. Decades later at least one member of that team was still wearing his. A reminder that the engraved Reverso was never only an aristocratic object — it was also how a country said thank you.

Source: Fritz, Reverso: The Living Legend

Peter Lee spent days perfecting a poem for his wife Yin Sze to mark their tenth anniversary, then walked into the Jaeger-LeCoultre boutique in Hong Kong and asked for the whole thing engraved on the case. Chinese poems are written vertically, in columns running top to bottom and ordered right to left. It reads: “It is my honour to have you as my wife, I love your kindness, our lonely single days are at an end, and we shall live happily together ever after.” But it works in two directions. Read horizontally, left to right, the top row says “love you forever” and the bottom row says “Yin Sze, the wonderful wife” — two more messages hidden inside the first, on a watch whose whole idea is that something is concealed until you turn it over.

Source: Foulkes, Reverso

The Brazilian actor Juliano Cazarré had his favourite tattoo engraved on his Reverso: a tiger and a dragon, locked together. They are not decoration. They are his two eldest children — the tiger and the dragon are their signs in the Chinese horoscope. In his own words: “These powerful animals are considered complementary opposites, and together form an unbeatable unit, and in that way they are just like my sons, so different from each other but inseparable in my love for them.”

Source: Foulkes, Reverso

For his birthday in 2018, Cho Hyunchul’s five-year-old son Yoonjae painted his portrait — a round face, one eye larger than the other, a few strokes of hair. It meant enough that his father wanted it with him every day, so he had it engraved on the back of a Reverso Classic bought in Seoul that May, complete with the date and the words “from YJ” in the boy’s own hand. It is his most prized possession, and he is already planning to give it away: “When my son is a grown man, and perhaps himself the father of his own family, I will give him the watch to remind him of the touching moment when he gave his father this wonderful birthday gift.”

Source: Foulkes, Reverso

Five engraved letters — D MAC A — turn an otherwise typical 1930s steel Reverso into one of the most historically loaded watches the maison owns. In 2015 it became the most expensive Reverso ever sold at auction, bought by Jaeger-LeCoultre for its own museum after fierce bidding took it to almost nine times its low estimate. The craftsmanship is not exceptional and the black lacquer around the monogram is slightly chipped; it is the wrist it sat on that made the price.

Source: Foulkes, Reverso (Jaeger-LeCoultre)

A polo player and long-standing ambassador for the model, given a genuinely blank canvas to mark a decade of collaboration. A plain white dial on the front; flip it and the reverse is midnight blue with diamonds for stars. The personal engraving went somewhere unexpected — the inner face of the cradle that carries the case — and holds her children’s initials, a pair of crossed polo sticks, and a marquess’s coronet for her husband. Worn on a blue Casa Fagliano strap.

Source: Foulkes, Reverso

A watch that commemorates a rescue at sea. In February 1999, during the third leg of the Around Alone solo round-the-world race, Soldini picked up a Mayday from Isabelle Autissier — the first woman to complete a solo competitive circumnavigation — whose boat had capsized. He turned back, found her, and took her aboard. He still won the race, in 116 days, and received the Legion of Honour from the French government for the rescue.

Source: Foulkes, Reverso

A Chinese collector bought a Grande Reverso 1931 Rouge specifically in order to engrave it. The back carries the Liverbird, the phoenix-like symbol of the city of Liverpool and of Liverpool Football Club, engraved in the same red as the dial. He drew it himself on a computer and reshaped it to fit the case — a case-back designed by its own owner rather than by the atelier.

Source: Foulkes, Reverso

A gift in yellow gold whose surprise lay on the reverse: the engraved head of Newport, an Anglo-Arab horse foaled in 1982 and the last bred by his owner before his death. Injured in transport and left lame, Newport was spared on the instructions of the owner’s son, who put him out to pasture in his father’s memory. The horse recovered fully, became French three-day-eventing champion in 1992, competed at the Barcelona Olympics, and took second in the team event at the 1997 European championships.

Source: Foulkes, Reverso

The French sculptor Nathalie Decoster had a Reverso engraved for her son at seven: “My darling Louis, I love you madly”, alongside her own emblem — a motif she calls “the passing of time”, which she describes as the symbol of all her work. He is grown now, and wears it every day. In her words, she never expected it would become so important to him: “Now I really see this Reverso as a gift for a lifetime.”

Source: Foulkes, Reverso

The emblem of a chain of São Paulo barber shops modelled on 1940s New York — a moustached and bearded skull. The owner had it tattooed on himself to mark his first year in business, then had the same death’s head engraved on the back of his Reverso. Proof that the case-back tradition never belonged exclusively to princes and generals.

Source: Foulkes, Reverso

A British collector asked the maison to reproduce, on his own Reverso, the painting he loved most in his collection: Frederic Leighton’s Pavonia (1858–59). Miklós Merczel of the Métiers Rares atelier had to reproduce it in under 6 cm² while keeping the lifelike vibrancy of the original. The name comes from the Latin pavo, peacock — for the feathers fanning behind the sitter’s hair.

Source: JLC Yearbook FIVE, 2012

Five years in the making, and it began as a conversation in a Brussels jeweller’s shop. Charly Herscovici, president of the Magritte Foundation, was a long-standing customer of Maison De Greef — the oldest jeweller in Belgium, run by the same family since 1848 — and one day the talk with Jacques Wittmann turned to a watch Magritte himself would not have disowned. The result marks two anniversaries at once: the Reverso’s 85th in 2016, and the 50th of Magritte’s death in 2017. The case-back carries a lacquered engraving of The Treachery of Images (1929) — the pipe beneath the schoolchild’s handwriting reading “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. Design director Janek Deleskiewicz admitted the flat, absolutely even colour was “a real challenge”. Five pieces in white gold as the Grande Reverso Ultra Thin 1931, fifteen in steel as the Tribute to 1931.

The second of a planned triptych. A Reverso Classic Large in steel whose reverse carries a miniature of Magritte’s L’Oiseau de Ciel (1966) — the silhouette of a dove filled with clouds, its blue picked up by the numerals on the dial. The edition size is the quiet joke: thirty-three pieces, for 1833, the year the manufacture was founded. A third series was promised within two years.

Made for the centenary of Juventus F.C., in white gold for the Italian market. Reference discrepancy worth resolving: sources give both 270.3.62 and 275.3.62.

The other Turin club, in pink gold — and far rarer than the Juventus edition at twenty-five pieces against a hundred. Together the two record a city’s footballing rivalry on the back of the same watch.

A collaboration with the American designer Darren Romanelli marking the Reverso’s 75th anniversary, sold through the Paris concept store Colette — an unusually streetwear-adjacent partner for a house like this, and only fifty pieces.

Commissioned to mark two Dutch hundredths at once: the founding of the art movement De Stijl in Leiden in 1917, and the founding of the Hague jeweller Steltman the same year. The front gives nothing away — a standard Reverso Classic Large Small Second in steel, calibre 822/2, with no mention of Mondriaan, De Stijl or Steltman anywhere on the dial. Turn it over and there is a hand-painted miniature of Mondriaan’s 1921 Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Grey and Blue. The Métiers Rares atelier had to invent a new technique for it: De Stijl demands dead-straight lines and flat, absolutely even fields of single colour, which miniature enamel painting does not naturally produce. Each miniature is kiln-dried and sealed under colourless varnish, and because each is painted by hand every watch is subtly unique. Sold only at Steltman in The Hague.

Made to mark the opening of the Bond Street boutique and sold only there, in person, to selected clients — 26 pieces in all. It sold out before reaching the wider market.

Very possibly the rarest Reverso of the modern era: three pieces, each with the New York skyline on the case-back. The design was lifted from an advertisement Jaeger-LeCoultre ran in The New Yorker to announce a boutique opening — an advertisement turned into an engraving turned into a watch.

Made by the Métiers Rares craftsmen for the managers, coaches and players of AC Milan, in the club’s red and black. Announced by Adriano Galliani, then the club’s Executive Vice President and CEO, who noted the shared ground between the two houses — the club was 112 years old at the time, the manufacture had been running since 1833. Alongside the team pieces, an individually personalised Reverso was made for Galliani himself.

Twenty-five pieces, each with the fictional Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce logo engraved on the case-back beside its edition number. Steel, heritage dial, calibre 822. The partnership was real rather than a licensing deal: show creator Matthew Weiner had put a vintage JLC Memovox on Don Draper’s wrist from season one, and a Reverso Classique later — and JLC’s North American president Philippe Bonay set just two rules for the edition, a very small run and a model true to the period. Each watch shipped in a walnut box with the agency logo, and a letter written in character as Roger Sterling.

A white gold Reverso 1931 Seconde Centrale, its case-back engraved and enamelled with the logo of The Wakaya Club & Spa and the initials of David H. Gilmour beneath it. Gilmour, a Canadian-born entrepreneur, bought the small private island of Wakaya in Fiji and opened the Club there in 1990 on a former coconut plantation — eight suites that drew guests including Tom Cruise, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Keith Richards. Noticing his guests preferred imported Swiss water, he traced a silica-rich aquifer beneath Viti Levu’s volcanic highlands and in 1996 launched Fiji Natural Artesian Water, which went on to become the second-best-selling imported bottled water in the United States after San Pellegrino. This watch, case No. 3’033’453, automatic calibre 966A, was presented to Gilmour personally rather than sold through the ordinary retail run.

Made for the 150th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation: an 18k white gold Reverso Classic with a black dial, painted silver Roman numerals, dauphine hands, and manual-wound calibre 846. Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own certificate of authenticity, dated Le Sentier, 3 March 1997, describes it precisely: the watch “is part of a unique and limited series of 150 pieces produced by the Manufacture Jaeger-LeCoultre in Switzerland,” and “the back of the 18ct solid gold reversible case is decorated with a special engraving, which commemorates the 150 years of the Swiss Confederation” — the Swiss flag, engraved into the case-back beside the serial number.

A white or yellow gold Reverso with small seconds and a clean guilloché dial on the front; the reverse carries an engraved skyline of Geneva — the Jet d’Eau fountain and the Cathedral of St. Pierre — set with 40 diamonds (0.16 ct total). Twenty examples were made in white gold, thirty in yellow, fifty in total.

A double anniversary: 85 pieces for the 85th anniversary of both Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue and the Reverso itself. Stainless steel, automatic calibre 967B, blue dial with a 24-hour day/night indicator at six; the case-back carries a solid engraving of the statue. 46.8 × 27.4 mm, 9.1 mm thick, 42-hour reserve.

Marking 50 years of Singapore’s independence (1965–2015): steel case, silver-toned guilloché Clous de Paris dial, blued baton hands and a blue day/night indicator. The case-back carries a map of Singapore filled in red and white lacquer — the flag’s colours — with “1965–2015” beneath it and no individual edition numbering. Automatic calibre 967B, 46.8 × 27.4 mm, sold only at the Jaeger-LeCoultre boutiques at ION Orchard and Marina Bay Sands.

Thirty-nine pieces — 3 for the colours of the Thai flag, 9 for Rama IX, the ninth king of the Chakri dynasty, who died in 2016 after a 70-year reign. A deep yellow dial in his royal colour reads as “dawn”; the case-back is engraved with Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn. Automatic calibre 967B, 42-hour reserve, railway minute track with Art Deco markers around the day/night indicator.

Rose gold, marking the 25th anniversary of Kuwait’s 1991 liberation at the end of the Gulf War. A green dial with vertical guilloché in the centre carries scarlet red numerals at 2 and 5 o’clock — spelling out “25” across the dial — alongside sober Arabic numerals and sword hands, echoing the Kuwaiti flag. Self-winding calibre 967B, 200 parts, 42-hour reserve. Issued alongside a steel sibling (278.8.56) marking Kuwait’s 55th National Day the same year.

The steel counterpart to the 25th Anniversary rose gold piece above, marking Kuwait’s 55th National Day (55 years since independence from British protection in 1961) rather than the Gulf War liberation. Same green dial and flag-colour logic, but here a single scarlet red “55” replaces the ‘5’ at five o’clock. 46 × 27 × 9 mm, self-winding calibre 967B, delivered with three straps including two by Casa Fagliano.

For the 150th anniversary of Italian unification (and close to the Reverso’s own 80th): the thinnest Grande Reverso line at the time, 7.2 mm, manual calibre 822 (134 parts in 2.94 mm of height). The silvered dial’s hour markers print in red, and the numeral ‘8’ is replaced by a red ‘R’ — the Roman numeral for 80, the Reverso’s age that year. Issued in steel and rose gold; sources disagree on the exact split, with one account giving 150 pieces of each metal and another giving 150 steel to 50 rose gold.

For the Reverso’s 80th anniversary and the opening of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Mexico City boutique in Polanco, the manufacture invited Mexican muralist, painter and engraver Guillermo Ceniceros — born 1939 in El Salto, Durango, and a member of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s mural team — to use the Reverso’s case-back as a canvas. The steel version (50 pieces) depicts “man’s duality from a modernistic perspective” in engraving and lacquer; the rose gold version (10 pieces) shows “man in motion,” engraved directly into the gold. Both share the same Grande Reverso 976 base: 48.5 × 30 mm, manual calibre 976 (151 parts, 19 jewels, 48-hour reserve), a black vertically guilloché Clous de Paris dial, and vintage-orange numerals and hands on a black alligator strap.

Not a commercial edition but an award piece: the case-back engraved “LES MAGRITTE DU CINÉMA 2014” in the ceremony’s own colours, presented to Best Actor Benoît Poelvoorde (for Une place sur la terre) and Best Actress Pauline Étienne (for La Religieuse) at the fourth Magritte Awards — Belgium’s French-language film prize, organised by the Académie André Delvaux since 2011 and named, like the René Magritte enamel Reversos elsewhere in this archive, after the painter, though the two projects are unrelated. That year’s honorary award went to director Emir Kusturica, who received a matching personalised Atmos clock rather than a watch — confirmed by period photographs of Kusturica holding the Atmos beside Étienne holding her Reverso at the partners’ dinner in Brussels.

Engraved “60 ANOS OSESP 2014” — the circular anniversary logo at left can read as the letters “SESP” at a glance — for the 60th anniversary of the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, founded 1954. Fifty Grande Reversos were made and sold to fund roughly 70% of the cost of OSESP’s free Sunday-morning concerts at Sala São Paulo, reported at the time as reaching some 40,000 people; contemporary Brazilian pricing ran around R$28,000 in steel and R$57,000 in gold, though the exact split between metals across the 50 watches isn’t documented. The partnership extended beyond the watch: Jaeger-LeCoultre took on the roughly R$18,000 annual maintenance cost of the monumental public clock at Praça Júlio Prestes, the historic railway station that houses Sala São Paulo, and proposed restoring its long-closed interior clock room — timekeeping, music, and a public building tied together in one sponsorship.

Made alongside Batman Forever, Val Kilmer’s 1995 turn as the character: a black bat-symbol on the case-back with “FOREVER” in white capitals running through it, on the Grande Taille introduced four years earlier for the Reverso’s 60th anniversary. None of the 35 watches — 30 steel, 5 in 18k yellow gold — were ever sold; they went to cast, crew, and promotional or charity use, including at least one example shown at the 1998 Carousel of Hope Ball silent auction for the Children’s Diabetes Foundation. Only the first example is confirmed to remain in Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own collection, occasionally shown at watch events; most of the other 34 have never resurfaced. Manual calibre 822, 21 jewels.

Seventeen years after the Batman Forever edition, Jaeger-LeCoultre returned to the character for the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy: a black Bat-Shield engraved and lacquered onto the case-back of a Grande Reverso Ultra Thin Tribute to 1931, visible only when the case is flipped. In the film, Bruce Wayne wears a Reverso Grande Date on-screen. Ten steel examples were made — reportedly for Warner Bros. executives involved in the production, along with Nolan himself — and a wider commercial release was apparently planned but never happened, leaving these ten the only examples that exist. Jaeger-LeCoultre displayed the original Reverso in its Geneva, London, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong boutiques around the film’s July 2012 release.

A yellow gold Grande Taille enamel Reverso reproducing a miniature painting titled “The Path of Truth,” limited to eight pieces. Beyond the subject, edition size, and metal, little further detail on this piece has surfaced — it doesn’t appear in Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own major press announcements for the better-documented enamel tribute series, suggesting it may have been a smaller, quieter release.

Made to mark the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty: a steel Reverso whose case-back is engraved and enamelled in yellow, red, and black with a map of Greater China. The colour-coding carries real content — yellow for mainland Chinese territories, red for the wider autonomous regions (Guangxi, Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia), and black for the major cities and special administrative regions (Hong Kong, Macao, Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing). Ninety-seven pieces, accompanied by dual English and Chinese certificates of authenticity.

A steel automatic dual-time Reverso with date, made for the Royal Windsor Horse Show — fitting sponsorship territory for a watch whose case shape traces back to 1930s polo players. Limited to five pieces, an unusually small run even by this archive’s standards.

Made alongside the 65th Anniversary piece above, for the same 1996 milestone — the Reverso’s manufacture sits in the Vallée de Joux, within the canton of Vaud bordering Valais, and this white gold example’s case-back is engraved with the Matterhorn (Mont Cervin), the peak that has come to symbolise the Valais region and Switzerland itself internationally. Blue dial with painted silver Roman numerals. Sixty-five pieces, first sold in September 1999.

A pink gold Ultra Thin Grand Reverso made for the French Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy, in the same spirit as other single-location commemorative Reversos elsewhere in this archive (Wakaya, the various MR PORTER cities) — fifteen pieces, an especially small run even among boutique-exclusive editions.

A steel Ultra Thin Tribute to 1931 made to mark Expo 2020 Dubai (delayed to 2021–22 by the pandemic) — one of relatively few Reverso editions tied to a World’s Fair rather than a national anniversary, sporting event, or retailer milestone.

A yellow gold Grande Taille whose case-back is enamelled with Ferrari’s prancing horse rather than a painting or landscape — the same case reference used elsewhere in this archive for the 1996 Mucha Four Seasons and 1999 Aurore/Crépuscule sets, here repurposed for a corporate rather than artistic commission.

Made for YPO, the global network of chief executives, and ordered through its members, with orders closing on 1 January 2025. A Reverso Tribute with small seconds in the 45.6 × 27.4 mm case: a silver dial in steel, and a choice of silver or black dial in pink gold. The case back carries the globe, for a group that spans the world, as an enamelled world map, in blue or black, over an engraved field of triangles, the pattern of the YPO emblem. Collectors could choose between two versions of the case-back design. Thirty-eight were made in steel and twelve in pink gold; orders are thought to have been closed before the edition was filled.