Description

A beautifully restored Cal.540 ladies 18ct pink gold dress watch from 1958. The star of the show here is undoubtedly the audacious case design. The hooded lugs frame the watch excellently and give it an enormous presence on the wrist, also allowing the strap to flow seemingly from inside the watch onto your wrist.

Other notable features of this watch include its simply wonderful and highly elegant dial design. It’s typical of the 1940s and adopts the ‘calatrava’ style of dial design which was growing massively in popularity at the time, after becoming synonymous with Patek Phillipes elite dress watch aesthetic.

The Dial

The impeccably restored salmon dial has a vertically brushed finish which gives it just the right amount of texture to catch a wandering eye, despite its smaller size. Applied pink gilt batons mark the hour indices and matching original pencil hands complete the ensemble nicely. As can be seen from the photographs, neither the dial nor the original hands have a single scratch on them, which is incredible considering the high magnification of the professional macro lens used by our photographer. The dial is simply signed ‘Omega’ with ‘Swiss Made’ at the very bottom of the dial. This simplicity and excellent use of colour shows how Omega have excellently demonstrated their ‘less is more’ minds in the past and were masters of mid-20th century dress watch design.

Movement

The watch carries its original high grade Cal.540, 17 Jewel movement, which is in sparkling clean condition. The movement has been fully overhauled and serviced. This means it has been completely disassembled, cleaned, inspected and rebuilt using only original Omega parts where necessary, by our vintage Omega specialist watchmaker. When tested and calibrated, this watch was running to within -3 seconds per day, which is outstanding for any vintage ladies watch of this age! When fully wound, this movement has an excellent 38-hour power reserve. The movement is all correctly signed ‘Omega Watch Co’, and ’24 Jewels’, with the calibre number 540 and the serial number 16,222,634, dating this watch to 1958.

These movements are strong, accurate and very reliable, making the watch perfectly appropriate for regular everyday use should you wish to do so.

Watch Case

The solid 18ct pink gold, three-piece watch case is of sturdy solid construction and is in immaculate condition. The case is a good sized ladies watch case at 32mm across, excluding the signed Omega crown. It measures approximately 38mm top to bottom. The hooded lug design covers the pins holding the strap in place, where usually this is visible from the top profile, here the alligator strap seems to flow from inside the watch its self, a much neater and more stylish approach we think. The case has been cleaned, carefully inspected and gently hand-polished by our watch-case-maker and there are no scratches dings or marks visible to the naked eye.

As ever, our standard advice applies: Vintage watches should be kept clean and dry at all times.

The Strap and Buckle

The watch is fitted with a new high-quality brown Alligator strap, which suits the watch perfectly and the strap is fitted is with a pink gold plated Omega buckle.

The Box and Papers

Although there are no original papers with this watch, the movement, case numbers and hallmarks all match, dating the watch to 1958.

The genuine vintage Omega presentation box shown in the photographs is included in the sale.

In Conclusion

A truly beautiful top of the range, 1950s 18ct Pink Gold Omega dress watch in wonderful condition. If you are looking for a great example of Omegas balanced approach to dress watch design then there are few better examples than this. The movement is of a very high grade and the Omega 5oo series of movements are revered as some of the most reliable and outstanding movements ever made.