Diabolo

A Round Watch With Stone-Set Lugs

Cartier's best-known early wristwatches are shaped cases: the square Santos-Dumont of 1904, the Tonneau of 1906, the Tank of 1917. The Diabolo's ancestor was round. Sotheby's writes that the round wristwatch with cabochon stone, rose-cut diamond or pearl-set lugs and crown was first introduced by the firm in 1906, one of the earliest wristwatch designs Cartier produced, and it catalogs a gold, platinum and enamel lady's bracelet watch of about 1909 to 1910 under the Diabolo name.

What set the design apart was its lugs. Early wristwatches often had simple wire loops soldered to cases that looked like small pocket watches. On this model the lugs were a prominent, integral part of the case, set with stones that answered the stone in the crown.

The 1991 Collection

Monaco Legend writes that the Diabolo model was launched in 1991, and that its name comes from the conical shape of the large winding crown, which recalls the juggling toy of the same name.

The modern Diabolo kept the round case and the stone-set lugs. The lugs are long and slender, each ending in a blue sapphire cabochon, and another cabochon sits on the crown. For a dress watch the case is broad and thick, with a wide bezel and a back held by six screws.

Cartier built a family around it. The 32 mm Ref. 1420 tells the time and date on a quartz movement. The 1400-0, the same size, is a quartz chronograph with subsidiary registers. Smaller quartz models include the 27 mm 1440-0 and the 21 mm 1470-1, sold as the Diabolo Mini, and a diamond-set 1430 measures 31 mm. Hand-wound Diabolos on the Cartier Cal. 9P2 were made in yellow gold and in platinum, the latter documented as Ref. 1462-1.

The Diabolo Today

The Diabolo has stayed outside the main currents of Cartier collecting. Analog/Shift calls it an underappreciated Cartier design of the 1990s and presents it as an alternative to the Tank.

It changes hands steadily, if quietly. The time-and-date Ref. 1420 is the reference seen most often in the records we found, at auction houses in Geneva and France and with specialist dealers, while the chronograph, the smaller sizes, the diamond-set model and the hand-wound versions appear less often. The design's early history also surfaces at auction from time to time, in the form of the stone-set round watches Cartier Paris made before the First World War.