Watches: Face Time With Belair Time Corp.’s 100-Year-Old Founder



The Prince of BelairErnest Grunwald has seen the rise and fall of pin-lever watches, personally rivaled the Swiss when it came to assembling movements, and remembers the days when “everyone thought the world would end with the introduction of quartz,” the founder of Belair Time Corp. told JCK during a recent visit to his Lakewood, N.J., office. Grunwald turned 100 on March 28 and, though retired, still wears a suit to the office almost every day, while his son Alan serves as Belair’s president and owner.Born in Bielefeld, Germany, Ernest attended medical school in Italy until World War II led him to immigrate to Virginia in 1941. ­During this time, the family of his German girlfriend (and later wife) Ilse, who had also moved stateside, happened to be in the watch business in Uruguay and asked Ilse to sell their watches in the United States. When Ernest learned that American medica
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