Don't miss the next drop
OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED CHRONOMETER runs along the bottom of this blue dial, and the movement under the screw-in back answers it with a stutter. Its rotor reads ADJUSTED FIVE 5 POSITIONS & TEMPERATURE, beside 25 JEWELS SWISS MADE and a BUCHERER SWISS signature. The movement in this Bucherer 1574 was adjusted in five positions and for temperature, regulation meant to narrow the differences in rate that come with how a watch lies and how warm it gets. The dial makes the claim, and a part most owners never see backs it up.
Bucherer signed its watches with the family name alone, as this one is signed on the dial, the rotor and the inside of its back. The house was Carl Friedrich Bucherer’s, a jewelry and watch business he opened in Lucerne in 1888. By 1968 Bucherer had produced about 15,000 certified chronometers, enough to rank among the three largest Swiss makers of them. In 2001 the watches were renamed Carl F. Bucherer in the founder’s memory. In 2023 his grandson Jörg G. Bucherer, who had no direct heirs and was the last person still at work who had known Hans Wilsdorf, sold the business to Rolex, its partner since 1924. Rolex kept the shops and, in February 2025, discontinued the watch brand.
The case takes a broad barrel of steel and cuts an oval window into it, so the dial reads as an oval framed by metal rather than a disc running out to the edge. With the date at six, the oval stays symmetrical beneath a small crest and the BUCHERER name, and the raised crystal stands proud of the case when seen from the side. It measures 37mm by 37mm, a squared footprint around a rounded face.
The blue dial shows tan spotting around the markers and along its edge, with patches near the center, and the hands are marked. The case and the screw-in back, stamped in English with the reference 1574, carry scratches throughout. We have it on a powder-blue Italian suede strap, and it wears a signature the company stopped putting on its watches in 2001.
