17 Jewels Art Deco Amida Band-Less Watch.
17 Jewels Art Deco Amida Band-Less Watch Powered By Winding, Which Still Works.
Amida S.A., a Swiss watchmaking company, operated in the heart of the watchmaking region at the foot of the Jura Mountains from the very early years of the 20th Century, possibly earlier. Historical information is scant, but various brand names and trademarks are linked to the company and manufacturing locations were recorded at Biel, Longeau and Gretchen, Granges, is probably the French-Swiss name for the town of Gretchen, which is the name used by the German-Swiss. However, there is another Granges north of Montreux beside Lake Geneva which was also a watch-making region but it seems unlikely that the company would operate in two geographically separate regions). The company produced its own branded pocket and wrist watches, but as the illustration above from a 1939 copy of La Fédération Horlogère Suisse shows, it was also producing ébauches, or base movements and part movements at Granges (Gretchen?) for supply to other watchmakers who would rebuild these to their own requirements and specifications. This was common practice in the Swiss watch industry and although Amida was never in the top flight of Swiss watchmaking, the innards of some very expensive brands often started life in the workshops of more humble and lesser-known companies such as this.
Brands manufactured or supplied by Amida S.A. in addition to their own Amida brand include La Vérité and ReVox, the latter now owned by the Swatch Group. I have so far been unable to ascertain whether these brands belonged to other companies and were assembled from ébauches supplied by Amida S.A. or whether the brands belonged to Amida S.A. and were manufactured in-house. There is a suggestion that Charles Abrecht S.A. a watchmaker in Biel, may have been linked to the La Vérité brand but so far I have been unable to establish the precise connection.
As far as I am able to establish, Amida S.A. no longer exists, probably a victim of the 1970s quartz revolution from the East, and the last watch produced by the company was the rather avant-garde digi-mechanical Digitrend in the 1970s, a "jump-hour" type which built a cult following which continues today with good examples fetching surprising prices.
Item Code - CLO12B4432CAZ1
Width: 1 1/2" Height: 1 7/8" Depth: 1/4"
Weight: 42 grams.
