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The Zodiac Glorious is, in our opinion, one of the more quietly clever dress-watch experiments of mid-century Le Locle. Most “tuxedo” dials of the 1950s and 60s reach for the obvious black-and-white split, but this reference 688 layers a smoked translucent outer ring over a cream honeycomb center, then frames the whole thing with sculpted, outward-flared lugs that you simply do not see on modern dress watches. The result is a Zodiac Glorious that announces itself as vintage from across a room without ever resorting to gimmick.
Zodiac was founded in Le Locle in 1882 by Ariste Calame, which puts the brand among the older continuously-operating Swiss names still recognizable today. By the 1950s the company was running its own assembly under the Zodiac signature, sourcing semi-finished ébauches from specialists like A. Schild and finishing them in-house. The Sea Wolf and the later Aerospace get most of the modern attention, but the Glorious line sat firmly in the brand’s dress catalog, positioned as a clean automatic for buyers who wanted Swiss mid-century pedigree without the visual weight of a dive case. The 688 is one of the most often-seen Glorious references, and it is where the brand allowed its case designers to indulge.
Powering the watch is the Zodiac Cal. 1361, a Zodiac-signed version of the A. Schild 1361, a 17-jewel Swiss automatic introduced in the mid-1950s and used widely across the era by brands like Rado, Elgin, and Zodiac itself. The bridge of this example is stamped verbatim “Zodiac Ltd / 1361 / SEVENTEEN 17 JEWELS / UNADJUSTED SWISS” in gilded lettering, and the smaller balance-side bridge carries the cleaner “1361 N” stamp that denotes the variant cased by Zodiac. The “N” suffix in A. Schild’s nomenclature signals a customer-modified version of the base caliber, which is how a brand of Zodiac’s scale put its own regulation and finishing fingerprint on a workhorse ébauche while keeping production economics sensible. It runs at the traditional 18,000 bph train, services cleanly, and is exactly the kind of caliber that earned its keep through reliability rather than headline specs.
The case is a 34mm round in 14k gold-filled construction over a stainless steel caseback, with a 41.3mm lug-to-lug that proportions correctly to mid-century wrists. The lug architecture is the visual signature here: each lug flares outward and tapers to a chamfered tip, with a polished top facet that catches light against the more rounded mid-case. The outer caseback is engraved “AUTOMATIC-ANTIMAGNETIC-SWISS” curving along the right side and “WATER- & SHOCKRESISTANT” curving along the left, with the Zodiac wordmark and small cross-in-diamond emblem set centrally above the serial “1038951”, and a heraldic crown mark above the wordmark in the format Zodiac used through the late 1950s. The inner caseback is even better, with “Zodiac Ltd / Le Locle Swiss / 688 / FOND ACIER / INOXYDABLE” stamped over a deep concentric-circle decorative finish that period collectors will recognize immediately. The gold-fill on the bezel and lugs has worn honestly at the high points where any sixty-year-old gold-filled case would.
The dial is the headline. The center is a fine cream honeycomb texture that reads matte off-white when lit straight on and warmer ivory when angled, with uniform aging spots across the field that map exactly to the kind of patina a closed gold-filled case develops over decades. Framing the honeycomb center is a wide smoked translucent outer ring that lets the case material show through faintly at the edges, which is what gives the dial its sense of depth rather than the flat painted contrast that a true black-on-white tuxedo would offer. Applied gold-tone baton markers sit at every hour, each one anchored at the chapter-ring boundary and projecting partly onto the smoked ring and partly over the cream center. At twelve, an applied Zodiac lozenge emblem in cross-in-diamond form anchors the layout, with the italic “Zodiac” script and “Automatic” cursive sub-line printed directly across the middle of the cream zone. The dauphine hour and minute hands carry the same warm aging as the markers, with a slim gold-tone sweep seconds hand riding cleanly across the surface. There is no date and no sub-seconds register: the dial is uninterrupted across its full surface, which is exactly what a Glorious dial wants to be.
We are presenting this Zodiac Glorious on a black leather strap with white contrast stitching. The straight black grain reads quietly under a gold-filled case and lets the dial do the work, which is the right play for a watch whose visual interest lives almost entirely above the lugs.
Serviced in-house at OTTUHR and backed by our 2-year mechanical warranty, this Zodiac Glorious is a quietly handsome piece of 1950s Le Locle work that does not chase any of the obvious modern collector trends. For the collector who values texture and case sculpting over flat polish, and who reads a smoked translucent ring as more interesting than a black painted one, this is, to us, exactly the kind of Glorious that earns its place in a serious mid-century shelf.
