In production continuously since 1938, the Oris Big Crown Pointer Date, originally envisioned as a tool watch for aviators, has become Oris’s signature piece, even playing a key role in its revival as an all-mechanical brand in the wake of the 1970s Quartz Crisis. Oris marked the 80th anniversary of this emblematic timepiece last year in a watch with a bronze case and dark green dial. This year, the Hölstein-based brand ventures even further into the watch world’s new Bronze Age with another special edition, this one combining a bronze case with a solid bronze dial.
The Oris Big Crown Bronze Pointer Date has a multi-piece bronze case measuring 40 mm in diameter and featuring all the venerable model’s visual hallmarks, including the coin-edged bezel, tapered lugs, and the oversized, grooved, screw-down crown that gives it its name. Under a domed sapphire crystal with nonreflective treatment on its underside is the dial, made of a chemically treated bronze and coated with a transparent matte lacquer that will, Oris tells us, impart to each individual watch a unique finish. Vintage-look hands tell the time on white Arabic numerals while a central hand with a red crescent tip indicates the date on a peripheral scale. The hands, numerals and principal indices are all treated with Super-LumiNova.
Inside the case, behind a sapphire exhibition caseback, beats the Oris 754 caliber, based on the Sellita SW200-1 and customized with Oris’s familiar red-centered, bidirectional rotor. The self-winding movement stores a power reserve of 38 hours and is equipped with a stop-seconds function for easy time synchronization. Echoing the deep bronze and brown tones of the case, the Big Crown Pointer Date Bronze is offered on an unusual strap made of brown chamois deer leather, which fastens to the wrist with a buckle made of bronze. Oris has announced that the watch is available as of December 2019 and priced at 1,900 Swiss francs (about $1,895 as of this writing).