Source: https://myreversostory.com/stories/jlc-reverso-1933
Summary: A chocolate-brown dial in 1933, when nearly every dial was white or silver, and made that way only because its first owner asked. Ninety years later…
Updated: 2026-10-25
Publisher: My Reverso Story (https://myreversostory.com), an independent collector archive, not affiliated with Jaeger-LeCoultre.

@jlc.reverso

# A Brown Dial from 1933

A chocolate-brown dial in 1933, when nearly every dial was white or silver, and made that way only because its first owner asked. Ninety years later Jaeger-LeCoultre chose it for the first edition of The Collectibles.

Experience

## A Brown Dial from 1933

A chocolate-brown dial in 1933, when nearly every dial was white or silver, made that way because its first owner asked. Ninety years later, Jaeger-LeCoultre chose it for The Collectibles.

Reverso Small Seconds, stainless steel, brown dial · Ref. 201 · 1933

This 1933 Reverso Small Seconds, Ref. 201, represents a very different aspect of what attracts me to collecting Reversos: discovering how remarkably modern the model already was in its earliest years.

The watch was selected by Jaeger-LeCoultre for the first edition of The Collectibles in 2023, the Manufacture’s own program dedicated to sourcing, restoring, and offering important vintage pieces from its history. Powered by the rectangular manual-wound Calibre 410, it is housed in stainless steel and features a beautiful chocolate-brown dial.

The dial is what makes this example particularly fascinating to me. During the early 1930s, when white and silver dials dominated watchmaking, LeCoultre & Cie was already experimenting with much bolder colors. Alongside black, Reverso dials in brown, red, and blue could be ordered only upon request, making surviving examples considerably rarer.

To see such a rich brown dial on a watch produced in 1933 feels surprisingly contemporary, even more than ninety years later. It demonstrates that the Reverso was never simply an Art Deco watch of its time; from the beginning, it was also a platform for individuality.

For me, the value of this piece lies in that connection between originality and history. It is a watch whose rarity was not created as a limited edition, but happened naturally from an individual choice made by its original owner nearly a century ago.

### About [@jlc.reverso](https://myreversostory.com/collectors/jlc-reverso)

A Reverso collector in Thailand who shares the collection on Instagram as @jlc.reverso. The pieces here follow one thread: the Reverso as a record of history, from a coloured dial of 1933 and the first complicated Reverso of 1991 to editions made for Thailand and Kuwait, a tourbillon given a dial of its own, and Mucha’s Spring in enamel.

[Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jlc.reverso/)

More From This Collection

[**The Tourbillon Made My Own**Reverso Tribute Tourbillon Duoface, platinum, special salmon dial](https://myreversostory.com/stories/jlc-reverso-tourbillon)[**The Reverso of the Temple of Dawn**Grande Reverso Day/Night, Limited Thailand Edition](https://myreversostory.com/stories/jlc-reverso-wat-arun)[**Two Reversos, Two Anniversaries**Grande Reverso “25th Anniversary of the Liberation of Kuwait” (rose gold) and “55th Anniversary of the Nation of Kuwait” (steel)](https://myreversostory.com/stories/jlc-reverso-kuwait)[**The Collectibles**Series · Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own vintage programme](https://myreversostory.com/series/collectibles-capsule)[**Reverso (first series)**Models · 1931](https://myreversostory.com/models#m-1931-original)[**The lacquered colour dials**Models · 1931–1935](https://myreversostory.com/models#m-colour-dials)

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