A salmon dial is a watch dial with a pinkish tone. The name is a recent collectors’ habit; makers have called the shade rose, copper or pink gold. The colour goes back to pocket watches of the late 1800s, starting with Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe.
How is a salmon dial made?
The first salmon dials were made for pocket watches. A fine coat of gold was electroplated onto a blank brass dial, and the gold gave the pinkish colour. Some makers used chemical silvering instead. It can give a similar look without any real gold. Today most high-end makers use a galvanic process, in which the dial is coloured in an electrochemical bath. Modern makers also have other ways to reach the same tone, including lacquer and PVD coatings. So two dials of much the same shade may have been coloured in quite different ways.
Which watches have salmon dials?
Patek Philippe made salmon-dial versions of its perpetual-calendar chronographs, references 1518 and 2499. Vacheron Constantin, Longines, Rolex and Universal Genève also made salmon dials, though fewer of them. A later example came from Audemars Piguet. In 1992 it made a Royal Oak Jumbo with a salmon dial to mark the model’s 20th anniversary.
Why is it called salmon?
Salmon is a collectors’ word, not a maker’s term. Watchmakers have used several names for the same pinkish tone: rose, copper, gilded, rose-gilt opaline and pink gold. Anyone looking into an older watch may find its dial described under one of these names rather than as salmon. The colour grew more popular in the 1990s and the early-to-mid 2000s.
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