More Unusual Royal Orients!

Exactly one year ago, I dedicated a blog post to some unusual Royal Orients from the 1950s, in praise of their distinct (and sometimes truly outlandish) designs. Since then, I came across more special Royal Orients of the same era that appear worthy of posting here – all of which are from recent sale ads! Let's take a look…

This model should be familiar to those of you who watched closely the photo at the top of last year's blog post. It is similar in concept to my polka-dot Royal Orient, having that uniquely textured dial – and here, attached to the original matching leather strap. I find this combination absolutely wonderful.

What is even more amazing, is this – a third design from the same family of dial and strap combinations that did not appear in the Orient Catalog Book!

Again, it features the unusually organic dial texture. What is more surprising, I actually found two samples of this design – and as you can see in the comparison below, the patterns are not identical! No two watches are the same, adding to the rarity and prestige of this piece.

A little more conservative in their use of materials, but certainly quite uncommon in their dial design, are these two versions. Definitely not intended for people who like a clean dial… still, quite nice aren't they.

If you're looking for something cleaner, here are two nice examples. The top one is gold-filled, like most Royal Orient at the time. I like the way the gold markers and outer ring complement each other – the whole thing really looks like proper jewelry.

The watch below is similarly clean but in steel (or perhaps silver, by the looks of it). The concept is the same, the dial even more simple at first sight, but again it's that textured outer ring that makes the thing look special, and far from plain.

Looking for a Royal Orient that's clean but still, quite different from the rest of the crop? Well, look no further than this beauty!

I actually found two variants of this lugless design, one having the usual stick markers, but the one I liked most has these lovely Arabic number fonts (that remind me in particular of the Glashütte Sixties watches). Note that this is a slightly smaller watch, measuring 34mm in diameter, compared to 35mm of most other Royal Orients featured here.

I'll wrap up this lot of Royals with the nice little couple below… a rare bunch having a numeral at 12 instead of the stick markers. However, note that one has the Arabic number while the other has the Roman XII.

 

Pictures that appear on this post were taken from Yokohama's "Fire Kids" online shop, and various other sale ads.