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Dan Tanenbaum cufflinks made from vintage watch movements, from $125 to $250 at Holt Renfrew

Vintage watch cufflinks

Watch collector Dan Tanenbaum finds a link to the past with vintage movements

As a watch collector, Dan Tanenbaum is always on the lookout for “the best of the best.”

Whether meeting with dealers or hunting at antique shows, he often comes across ladies cocktail watches from the ‘20s and ‘30s. Most, however, have fallen into disrepair with tarnished cases, faded faces and broken straps.

But as a watch fanatic, Tanenbaum is also captivated by a timepiece’s inner workings. So he would pop the backs of the crippled watches to admire their mechanisms.

“I found that no matter how bad the dial looked, the movement would always be in mint condition,” he explains. “They would be sparkly and shiny and perfectly preserved. I began to see them as little pieces of art, little objets and I loved them.”

So he transformed the movements into cufflinks that are now sold at Holt Renfrew stores in Canada and at Stefanie’s boutique in Toronto.

Styles range from tiny round “button” watch movements that are about the size of a dime to larger squares and tonneaus. Some are signed Bulova or Omega, and some of the movements even still work.  The biggest challenge Tanenbaum has is finding matching pairs, but he has started a database to document which watch brands made which style of movement.

“And the cufflinks are not always exact twins,” Tanenbaum says. But they all have the same industrial, architectural look, thanks to the intricate layers of mechanical gears.

“These watches were made before automatic and quartz movements by people who took so much care,” marvels Tanenbaum, who inherited an appreciation of the past from his mother, Carole, a noted collector of vintage costume jewelry. “There is so much detail, I could look at them every day and see something new.”