Patiala To Geneva: How Indian Maharajas Became Watchmaking Patrons

The 1911 Delhi Durbar was the last of three held under British rule, after 1877 and 1903. It commemorated the coronation of George V as Emperor of India. The main ceremony was on December 12. Jacques Cartier ran Cartier's London operation. He went to Delhi as a businessman seeking princely clients. Cartier's later Indian commissions are linked, at least in part, to relationships begun there. Indian maharajas ordered from Geneva's watchmakers too.

Cartier And The 1911 Delhi Durbar

Jacques Cartier returned to India several times after the Durbar. He assessed stones there. He commissioned work that was mounted in Paris. The commissions linked to the Durbar include the Patiala Necklace, the Kapurthala turban ornament and the Nawanagar diamond pieces. Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala commissioned the necklace in 1925. Cartier presented it to him in 1928. It was set with 2,930 diamonds. The centrepiece was a De Beers diamond of 234.65 carats in its final setting. The necklace was last seen in a 1946 photograph. It was reported missing from the royal treasury in 1948. The De Beers diamond resurfaced at a Geneva auction in 1982. In 1998, Cartier associate Eric Nussbaum spotted what remained of the necklace in a London second-hand shop. Cartier bought it and spent four years restoring it.

Maharaja Of Patiala Watches: What Geneva Made For Him

Golay Fils & Stahl made a pocket watch around 1910 for Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, who ruled Patiala from 1900 to 1938. The Geneva house was founded in 1837. The watch is 18k yellow gold and open-faced. It is 52 mm across and has 31 jewels. It has a minute repeater, a perpetual calendar with moon phases, an equation of time and sunrise and sunset indications. The sunrise and sunset function works for one latitude only. The Phillips catalogue ties it to Patiala. The catalogue essay says the movement blank was probably made by Leon Aubert of Brassus. It credits the calendar mechanism to Paul-August Golay of the Vallée de Joux. The sunrise and sunset mechanism is credited to Jean Piguet of Brassus. It sold at Phillips in Geneva in May 2026 for CHF 647,700 (approx. USD 834,000, or Rs. 7 crore). The estimate was CHF 100,000 (approx. Rs. 1.1 crore) to CHF 200,000 (approx. Rs. 2.2 crore).

Vacheron Constantin's archive records a large tourbillon pocket watch created for Maharaja Sir Bhupinder Singh of Patiala. A similar timepiece was made for the American collector Henry Graves Jr. The Maison says the Maharaja visited its workshop in 1921. It counts him among its best-known watch collectors.

Did India Inspire The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso?

The Reverso's origin story is set in India. In 1930, César de Trey, a Swiss businessman and watch enthusiast, watched a polo match. British officers wore a watch that was smashed by a mallet. De Trey took the problem to Jacques-David LeCoultre. The engineer René-Alfred Chauvot designed the swivelling case. The patent was filed on March 4, 1931 in Paris. The polo story is widely told. No independent evidence backs it. Jaeger-LeCoultre's own heritage account carries an Indian royal link. The Maison says the Maharajah of Kapurthala reportedly commissioned 50 Reversos with an enamel miniature portrait of his wife on the caseback. It believes they are lost. Its collection holds a 1936 Reverso with a portrait of an Indian woman, thought to be Kanchan Prabha Devi, Maharani of Tripura State.