EARLY STEEL REVERSO - RED LACQUERED DIAL Lisica S.A. (Tavannes Watch Co. For Jaeger-LeCoultre), 'Reverso movement No. 223109, case No. Made circa 1931. Fine and very rare, rectangular, reversible, stainless steel wristwatch with red lacqu. Event date: event description: 2016-03-24: sn assigned for sect 66a subseq desig from ib: 2016-03-28: new application office supplied data entered in tram.

Contents
Cyma
Schwob Frères
Tavannes Watch Co.
The 'Tavanne's' Mystery
The 'Stayte' Brand
U.S. Pat 24 May 1904
The Langbourne Watch
The Submarine Watch
Paul Perret Balance Springs
Cushion Case Watch
Patent CH 155519
Case Reference Numbers
References

Tavannes

Tavannes is in a French speaking canton so the s is silent: it should be pronounced ‘ta-van’.

In 1870 master watchmaker Henri-Frédéric Sandoz (usually just Henri Sandoz; born 1851 Le Locle, died 1913 Tavannes) founded a watch manufacturing company in Le Locle, Switzerland, in his own name: 'Henri Sandoz and Co.'

Henri later founded a watchmaking company in Tavannes, which took the name of the town. The Tavannes Watch Company entered into a partnership with Schwob Frères for sales and marketing, and the brand Cyma was created for this purpose.

Henri departed from the company in 1891 for unknown reasons and another family member, Jules Sandoz, continued the business. The Sandoz brand continues to this day used by at least four different companies around the world.

The brand Cyma continues to this day. The brand Tavannes has been resuscitated. Schwob Frères has disappeared completely.

Tavannes Watch Co.

In 1891 Henri Sandoz founded the Tavannes Watch Co. S.A. This was named after the small Jura mountain municipality of Tavannes in the French-speaking Swiss canton of Bern. Sandoz was a talented engineer and under his direction the company developed its own calibres (watch movements) and also advanced automatic machines (specialised lathes, milling machines, etc.) to manufacture them. Tavannes also supplied watchmaking machinery to other manufacturers.

Very soon after the Tavannes Watch Co. had been founded, certainly by 1892, Sandoz and Schwob Frères came to a mutually beneficial arrangement. Schwob Frères had a well developed distribution network, established over their 30 years in the business, through which they could market and sell Sandoz's watches. This instantly gave the Tavannes Watch Co. access to a large market instead of having to develop it from scratch.

Sandoz was a prolific inventor. Between 1889 and 1907 he registered 39 patents for improvements to watches in his own name, and a further 11 were registered by the Tavannes Watch Co. SA under his direction before his death in 1913.

Although Tavannes suffered like many Swiss watch companies during the “quartz crisis” the brand was resuscitated in 2008 by a husband and wife partnership who have a genuine interest in the brand and its history. The new owner actually came to my house in Cheshire to see my Tavannes Submarine watches and interview me about them - you can see my Submarine watch on their history page at Tavannes Watches History.

Schwob Frères

Schwob Frères (Schwob Brothers) was founded in 1862 in La Chaux-de-Fonds by Joseph and Theodore Schwob as an établisseur, an assembler of watches. They purchased ébauches (bare movements), cases, dials and hands and assembled these into watches. Schwob Frères trademarked a number of brand names over the years and developed an extensive overseas distribution network to market and sell their watches. In 1874 Schwob Frères established an American distributorship.

Cyma

It appears that Schwob Frères created the name Cyma as a brand name for Tavannes watches sold through the Schwob Frères network. Cyma was short and easily pronounced, although being of Swiss-French origin it should be pronounced see-mah, which is not immediately apparent to English speakers. Eventually the name Cyma became much better known than either Tavannes or Schwob Frères.

The arrangement between Tavannes and Schwob Frères wasn't an amalgamation; the two companies remained separate and watch continued to be made under the Tavannes name. The Tavannes Watch Co. sold watches as well as machinery to other companies, and Schwob Frères continued to sell other watches under its other brand names.

Sometimes it is said that 'cyma' means summit in French but this isn't right, the French word for summit is 'sommet'. It appears that cyma came from the same Latin root as the French word 'cime', which is usually translated as top or crown.

Cyma-Tavannes was one of the few Swiss companies that up until the 1950s produced most of its own movements. They were a manufacture, not just assemblers who bought movements from other companies and put them into cases with their name on the dial. Cyma-Tavannes finally ceased all in-house production in 1966, the rights to the brand name were purchased by Chronos Holding.

The Mysterious Apostrophe

Tavannes with mysterious apostrophe

Occasionally watches are seen that have 'Tavanne's Watch' on the dial. This is a grammatical error and a mystery. The name of the town is Tavannes, which is singular and requires no apostrophe. The name of the company was 'Tavannes Watch Company' and again an apostrophe would be wrong.

The addition of an apostrophe as in 'Tavanne's Watch' would be the correct punctuation for watch that belongs to Tavanne, which is clearly ridiculous. The words on the dial usually appear to be painted rather than fired into the enamel, so they were added after the dial was made, but when is impossible to say. The first time I saw this I thought that someone had painted it onto the dial of a watch they were selling, perhaps thinking it would increase its value in some way, but it appears too often to have been a one off occurrence.

The movements are often clearly branded Cyma, the reason for putting the name Tavannes on the dial of one of these watches, especially as 'Tavanne's Watch', is a mystery.

Schwob Frères and Tavannes Brands, and 'Stayte'

Over the years of their existence, Schwob Frères and Tavannes registered dozens of brand names which are listed in Pritchard and Kochmann so I won't repeat them here, but one name that doesn't appear in either Pritchard or Kochmann is 'Stayte'. I have seen the Stayte brand on a Tavannes movement in a wristwatch with a Dennison made case, with the brand 'Stayte' appearing on the dial and on the distinctive central finger as shown in the picture here.

Sometimes the name Admiral, a Tavannes brand, or Admiral Tacy (a combination of TAvannes and CYma) appears on Tavanes or Cyma watches, and Stayte might be a further development of the Tacy theme.

U.S. Pat. 24 May 1904

US Pat 24 May 1904

Tavannes Watch Co. movements often bear a reference to a US patent 'U.S. PAT 24 May 1904' or 'U.S. PAT 24 MAY. 1904' (the stamp is poor in the P and it often looks like 'U.S. FAT 24 May 1904'). This is a reference to patent US 760647 for a negative set stem winding and setting mechanism (keyless work) granted to Henri Sandoz on that date, a US version of a Swiss patent CH 28243 granted to Sandoz in 1903. US Pat 24 May 1904

This mechanism was designed on the negative set or 'American system' principles. If a negative set mechanism is present in one of these movements, the setting lever screw, which normally releases the stem, is not present and the legend 'U.S. PAT 24 May 1904' is stamped where the setting lever screw would otherwise be, as shown in the picture on the immediate left where the 'Y' of May or the '19' of the '1904' part of the legend is where the setting lever screw would b

Tavannes Watch Co Serial Numbers