8 Days Manufacture

In 2014, for its 125th anniversary, Doxa unveiled the 8 Days Manufacture, a watch explicitly conceived as a tribute to founder Georges Ducommun and the patent he had filed in 1907 for a manual-winding caliber capable of an eight-day power reserve, at the time intended for dashboard clocks in automobiles, aircraft and boats and fitted, from 1911, to Bugatti cars and later to Mercedes-Benz and Peugeot. Bringing that same feature — eight days of autonomy — to a wristwatch in the anniversary collection was Doxa's chosen way of explicitly linking its present to the invention that had helped set the brand's history in motion more than a century earlier.

The case, with a generous 57-millimeter diameter, echoes in its proportions the dashboard instruments of the original patent's era and is offered in steel or with 10-micron rose gold plating; the sapphire display caseback reveals the finishing of the manual-winding caliber, decorated with Côtes de Genève, hand engraving, twenty-one jewels and blued screws, while the 30-meter water resistance marks it out as a collector's and formal-wear watch rather than one for intensive use. The model is offered in four dial variants — black or white, with an open or closed heart, with or without a power-reserve indicator — alongside a further dedicated execution named "Pilot".

Total production was limited to 125 pieces worldwide, a number chosen deliberately to echo the 125 years celebrated by the brand, and each watch is delivered with an alligator-leather strap, black or brown, inside a black lacquer box. Owing to its nature as a limited-run commemorative edition, the 8 Days Manufacture remains today one of the rarest and hardest-to-find models in Doxa's entire contemporary production.