Centenaire

In 1956 Eterna celebrated its centenary — the company had been founded in 1856 in Grenchen — with the launch of the Centenaire line, a family of ultra-thin automatic watches aimed at a more formal audience than sporty collections like the Kon-Tiki, which would follow shortly after. The line's very name explicitly recalls the hundred years of activity the brand had reached.

The Centenaire's distinguishing feature is its hidden crown, recessed into the side of the case so as to give the watch's profile a perfectly circular outline, free of any protrusion: an uncommon stylistic solution in automatic watchmaking of the era, made possible by the compact caliber adopted for the line, including caliber 1439. Several variants followed one another through the 1950s and 1960s, including the Centenaire 61, with a sportier dial and luminescent indices.

Less well known to the general public than the Kon-Tiki, the Centenaire is remembered today by vintage watch enthusiasts as an example of the understated elegance typical of Eterna's postwar dress production, and shows how the brand applied the same ball-bearing rotor technology introduced in 1948 to both its sportier and its more formal models.