A Pocket Watch for the Purist
Automatic watches have always been a collector's favourite, valued for their traditional winding, sophisticated design, and the sense of craftsmanship you feel on the wrist. Bangalore Watch Company started that conversation with our dress watch, bringing a dress watch to a format many had set aside.
Since then, we've built collections that tell the story of a modern, progressing India, watches that draw from aviation, space, the outdoors, and the sport of cricket. The natural question that followed was what comes next. For us, the answer was a pocket watch, a format that had all but disappeared from everyday life but never lost its appeal among traditional collectors.
Pocket watches were the standard way to carry time through much of the 19th and early 20th century, carried in a waistcoat pocket and attached to a chain. Wristwatches only became common after the First World War, when soldiers needed a faster way to check the time in the field, and pocket watches slowly moved from everyday use to something reserved for formal occasions and collectors who appreciated their craft. That's the format we chose to bring back with Forty-Seven, our first pocket watch, built for someone who connects with a classic design rather than a passing trend.
The Story Behind Forty-Seven
Forty-Seven takes its name from 1947, the year a nation of 300 million people emerged from two centuries of colonial rule. Left with a per capita income of just $50 and a literacy rate of 12 percent, that generation had every reason to look back with resentment. Instead, they spent their time building institutions, writing a constitution, and choosing ambition over reprisal. That decision shaped everything that followed, from rockets reaching Mars to a generation of engineers and entrepreneurs building for the world.
Forty-Seven represents that collective ambition to build a future. It isn't a step back from the story of modern India that our other collections tell. It's a reminder of where that story started.
Design Built for the Era it Honours
The watch comes in a 46mm case in 316L surgical steel with a PVD rose gold finish, evocative of the mid-20th century. Its off-white, linen-patterned dial adds character, paired with a Super-LuminNova index in an old-radium glow for a period-accurate look after dark. The dial sits under a domed K1-hardened crystal, powered by a Swiss-made Ronda 6004.D quartz movement with a battery life of around 40 months.
The watch comes on a lanyard-style, oil-pulled leather strap, so it can be carried the way pocket watches once were, and the caseback can carry a personalised message, making it a piece that works as much as a gift as it does a watch for yourself.
Bangalore Watch Company
Forty-Seven joins a growing set of collections at Bangalore Watch Company, from our space-inspired and pilot watches to Peninsula Professional, our outdoor watch collection built around India's varied landscapes, and Cover Drive, our tribute to cricket. Each collection is built around a different chapter of India's story, and Forty Seven goes back to the first page of that story, the years that made everything else possible.
At Bangalore Watch Company, we don't just build watches; we build stories you can wear. Every Indian watch at BWC is built to last and backed by a team that stands behind every watch long after it leaves the boutique.