Paul Newman must have been a terrible driver. The actor and racing car enthusiast was given two watches by his wife, Joanne Woodward, both of which bore inscriptions on their casebacks. One read “Drive Carefully. Me”.  The other, more beseechingly, “Drive Very Slowly. Joanne”. Now widely shared after reaching auctions, such little missives were, of course, once between wife and husbands. To be fair to Joanne, this was all at a time when racing car drivers had a one in five chance of not finishing a race alive.

However, Newman’s watches also belong to the past by the very fact of being engraved. If engraving your pocket watch was the norm – just having a pocket watch was an expression of wealth and engraving it a further expression – the wristwatches that replaced them were, over time, much less subject to the same attention. This may have been because of the lack of “real estate’” to work with or the lack of opportunity to show off the results. Still, up until the 1970s, having a watch engraved when it was a gift – between lovers, parents and children – or to commemorate an occasion – be that a race or a retirement – was commonplace enough.

 

Possibly one of the most famous caseback engravings, from Joanne Woodward to Paul Newman, courtesy of Phillips.

 

“In earlier decades, a watch was given to mark an occasion and in fact you’d be as likely to attain your watch this way as by buying one for yourself. That watch might be the only watch you’d ever own – as such it was that much more significant,” argues Julien Schaerer, Managing Director of auction house Antiquorum Geneva. “But I think watches are given as gifts much less often now, and owning a single watch is less common too. Someone is more like