1950s Jaeger LeCoultre | Preserving "Tick Tock"

This 1958–59 9ct gold Jaeger-LeCoultre once belonged to a watch dealer known within the family as “Tick Tock”.

He had converted the attic of his home into a small workshop filled with watches, clocks, and parts. It became his space for buying, repairing, and living among timepieces, and it’s from this that the nickname “Tick Tock” naturally came.

This particular Jaeger-LeCoultre was later gifted down to his granddaughter, who eventually passed it on as she preferred to keep another piece he had given her—a Tag Heuer that remained her regular wearer. The JLC therefore moved on, still carrying a quiet connection to that attic workshop.

At some point in its life, the watch was fitted with a custom diamond-set bezel. Whether Tick Tock commissioned this himself while working with watches, or whether it was already like this when it passed through his hands, is not known. Either way, it became part of the watch’s long and slightly mysterious history.

There’s something fitting about it now sitting under the name Jacks Attic—a subtle echo of another attic filled with watches, clocks, and the same fascination with time.

I wanted to put this piece up as a sort of time capsule for Mr Tick Tock—something that keeps a small part of his attic, and his world of ticking watches, alive.