Tiffany & Co. celebrates 160 years since creating one of the first American stopwatches by reinventing the Tiffany Timer in a limited-edition of 60 pieces. The new Tiffany Timer unites the House’s celebrated legacy in jewelry and design with its distinguished history in watchmaking. Refined details give direct expression to the House’s legendary diamond expertise and its platinum case is equipped with an exclusive, customized El Primero 400 movement featuring the legendary Bird on a Rock. The Tiffany Timer will be revealed during the 2026 edition of LVMH Watch Week in Milan, from January 19 to January 22, 2026.
Honoring a distinguished watchmaking legacy
When Tiffany & Co. began retailing watches in 1847, Charles Lewis Tiffany quickly recognized a strong demand for finely made, high-precision timepieces and began selling a large assortment of watches, including those made by Swiss watchmakers. The growing demand led to the debut in 1866 of the Tiffany & Co. Timing Watch—a pocket watch designed for use in science as well as for sporting events, recognized today as Tiffany’s first stopwatch. Two years later, it was renamed the “Tiffany & Co. Timer,” coinciding with Tiffany & Co. opening its watch assembly workshop in Switzerland. In 1874, Tiffany & Co. inaugurated a full watchmaking manufacture in the heart of Geneva producing timepieces with various complications, including chronographs and calendar watches, and receiving patents for advances in watch movements and hand settings, among other innovations.
During LVMH Watch Week, three 19th-century Tiffany & Co chronographs will be displayed along with the new Tiffany Timer, including two split-seconds chronographs with ‘Geneva’ on the dial. These historic pieces will be complemented by rarely seen materials from The Tiffany Archives, including a late 90s Catalogue of Timing Watches and the 1893 Blue Book.
Elegant Proportions and Jewelry-inspired Details
The 40 mm polished platinum case of the Tiffany Timer is an elegant composition of sinuous lines and rounded surfaces, with the chronograph pushers curved to follow the profile of the case and serving as crown protectors. The faceted crown recreates the form of the six-pronged Tiffany® Setting made famous by the House’s diamond solitaire rings. The cool luster of the polished platinum is complemented by a dial in Tiffany Blue® lacquer. The hours are marked by baguette-cut diamonds—a nod to the House’s gem-setting expertise and deep legacy in precious stones. Maintaining the tonal harmony, the hour, minute, and sub-dial hands are white gold.
The making of the dial is a complex and lengthy process requiring over 60 hours of high-precision work. First, using a tiny, hand-operated tool, the surface of the dial base is spray-painted with a layer of matte varnish in Tiffany Blue®—an operation repeated eight times to achieve the desired depth of colour. The dial is then kiln-dried for two hours at a precisely controlled temperature. Next, an artisan applies 15 layers of transparent lacquer, with each layer needing to be completely air-dried under carefully controlled conditions of humidity and temperature. Over 12 hours of baking in a kiln completes the process, bringing the total time required for the first stage of the process to 45 hours. Then, once the artisan applies the transfer-printed details, the gem-setter sets the baguette-diamond indexes on the dial.
Turning the watch over, the sapphire crystal case-back reveals an unexpected detail that perfectly encapsulates Tiffany & Co.’s whimsical sense of joy: a recreation of the bird motif from the House’s iconic Bird on a Rock brooch designed by Jean Schlumberger for Tiffany & Co. perches on the open-worked winding rotor. Faithful in every detail to Schlumberger’s original design, the tiny bird, measuring just 1.4 cm in width is sculpted by hand from a solid piece of 18k yellow gold. It is then polished by hand in the traditional way, using various tools including diamond abrasives and sticks of gentian wood to create different degrees of shine that bring out the contours, before taking its perch on the oscillating weight. The case-back is engraved with “Limited edition of 60”.
A Custom El Primero Chronograph Movement
The three-register dial layout is a classical expression of the El Primero caliber—symmetrical and intuitive to read: chronograph seconds are indicated on the dial periphery, chronograph minutes at 3 o’clock, chronograph hours at 6 o’clock and running seconds at 9 o’clock. One of watchmaking’s most useful complications, a date display, is added in a window at 6 o’clock. For enhanced legibility, all indications are transfer-printed in dark grey on the Tiffany Blue® background.
Five decades ago, the Zenith El Primero represented a major technical breakthrough when it was introduced, and today, it remains one of the world’s most celebrated watch movements. Although self-winding or automatic calibers had existed in various forms for almost two centuries, the technology had never been successfully adapted to a chronograph until Zenith launched the El Primero—meaning “the first”—in January 1969.
The exclusive Tiffany & Co. version of El Primero Calibre 400 that powers the Tiffany Timer represents the House’s third collaboration with Zenith. In 1980, the House launched the Tiffany Automatic Chronograph, cased in 18k yellow gold and fitted with the El Primero caliber 3019 and in 2024 the Atlas equipped with an Elite Moonphase movement.
