It’s a bracelet! It’s a brooch! It’s a secret watch!

Over the centuries watchmakers have tried many ways to disguise the basic function of a timepiece. They hid the dial under a cuvette, or cover, or behind a layer of filigree or other ornamentation.

But form watches may be the most creative approach of all. That is the term that the industry uses for a watch in the shape of a flower, a ladybug, a pistol or, well, just about any shape capturing the watchmaker’s imagination.

Form watches date to the 1500s, and while their popularity has waxed and waned over the centuries, several high-end brands are still producing them today.

Bulldogs, Pandas, Snakes

Bulgari has championed the modern form watch with Serpenti, a snake motif celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Since its introduction in 1948, watch dials have been hidden under, or even inside, the reptile’s head and the flexible metal bracelet, made of what the house calls Tubogas, curls around the wrist and up the arm, just like a real snake might.

In May, at its high-jewelry event in Venice, the house unveiled two Serpenti Misteriosi models in 18-karat white gold: the Dragone, in diamonds and emeralds, and the Pallini, with emeralds, Paraiba tourmalines and diamonds. Both feature Bulgari’s 12.3-millimeter Piccolissimo movement.

“Bulgari wanted to create something that was not just a watch but a piece of jewelry that women could wear every day, and that is why the house turned to the serpent, which has been a symbol of power and seduction since ancient times,” Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, its product creation executive director, wrote in an email. “Bulgari has a long history of creating both form watches and secret watches in its Serpenti line,” resulting in “watches that are both artistic and functional.”

One of Chanel’s signatures, the camellia, also has been used in form watches over the years. The Camélia jewelry watch, a quartz-powered secret watch from 2018 designed to look like the flower, was featured in early spring in the windows of the Chanel boutique on Avenue Montaigne in Paris. A disc formed by some jewelry petals, in diamonds and white gold, can be rotated back to reveal the dial.

Chanel’s watchmakers and jewelers also produced the Mademoiselle Privé Bouton, a timepiece introduced in 2020 that resembles the cuff of a blouse, complete with a button to cover the dial. Variations are made of tweed or quilted calfskin, both materials regularly used by the house, while the button is crafted of gold and various precious gems.

Parmigiani Fleurier didn’t have jewelry in mind when it created the Bugatti 370, a form watch that is a three-dimensional representation of the famous racing car’s engine.

“Parmigiani Fleurier wanted to dramatically innovate following the partnership agreement concluded with Bugatti Automobiles at that time,” Guido Terreni, the watch brand’s chief executive, explained in an email. “We agreed to develop a movement inspired by motor vehicle technology, displaying the gear train as well as the full working mechanism, like an engine. The idea was to create a watch that the driver could read on his wrist while driving.”

Creativity was what interested Maximillian Büsser, the founder of MB&F, when he created timepieces shaped like an owl, a panda and a bulldog — “shapes that interested me,” he said, and many of them “were something from my youth.”

The HM3 Frog, for instance, was inspired by the time he discovered tadpoles in a pond when he was a boy. “That’s how the frog came about. I was a lonely only child.” Other forms came from childhood fantasies: spaceships and airplanes.

“MB&F became my psychotherapy,” the watchmaker said. “I don’t care if people like what I do. I don’t imagine someone is looking for a watch that looks like a dog. We create our own path.”

The Origins

The path of form watches began at least 500 years ago. “There are records from approximately 1500 with watches made in different shapes,” said Simon Bull, a watch historian and consultant in England. “Basically, form watches start with watches in a ball shape, in a pomander shape, made in metal with piercings.”

Nathalie Marielloni, vice curator at the Musée International d’Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, said that, in addition to a watch, the pomander would include some perfume. “Ladies were so constricted in their corsets, they used the pomander to reanimate themselves when they fainted,” she said. Also, the pomanders ensured “they could smell nice.”

Timepieces, Mr. Bull said, “were also set into swords, daggers, powder flasks and books. They could be four or five inches long. In the second half of the 16th century and into the 17th, there is one major technical improvement: the invention of smaller springs, which could reduce the size of the timepiece so you can carry a watch. You’ve got portable clocks before that, but not something you can put in a pocket.”

There also were watches in the form of religious objects, he said. “You get watches in the shape of crosses, you get skulls, memento mori, due to the paranoia that people had about going to heaven or hell.”

At the end of 17th century, another invention changed the course of watchmaking: the balance spring, which helps regulate the mechanism and improve timekeeping accuracy. “Watches could keep time within minutes per day,” Mr. Bull said. “Everyone was taken with having a watch that could be used to tell time and set your day by. Form watches continued to appear, in the shape of a parrot, a turkey, a chimera or fantastic bird, rabbits, dolphins, dogs, lions, tulips, sea urchins, doves and others.”

Miranda Marraccini, the librarian at the Horological Society of New York, wrote in an email that improvements in enameling and engraving techniques at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th “allowed artisans to create very realistic and detailed watches in the shape of fruit, animals and objects like hats and baskets. Many watches also drew connections to other preoccupations of the period — hot air balloons, for instance.”

“My favorite form watch,” she wrote, “is a little pistol from the early 1800s. It’s only a few inches long and covered in pearls and enamel. It has a secret compartment in the handle that opens to reveal a tiny watch dial. Pulling the trigger releases a red enameled flower bud from the end of the pistol, which in turn squirts perfume from its center.”

Technological developments beyond watchmaking affected form watches, too. “From 1850, you get another change,” Mr. Bull said, “the introduction of the railways. Time is important. Toys were not so interesting to people as watches that kept the best possible timekeeping.”

“There are not many surviving watches from the 1850s onward that you could call true form watches,” he said. “The next time they appear, from 1900 onwards, is effectively as jewelry,” such as Bulgari’s Serpenti.

To Luc Van Cauwenbergh, a watch collector in Brussels, “form watches are pieces of art and witness the unlimited creativity of the goldsmiths in shape and decoration.”

He is writing a book, already several hundred pages long, about the timepieces in his collection. One of his favorites, he wrote in an email, is “a Chinese snuff bottle in gold enamel and pearls with a watch in the stopper, made around 1800 in Geneva. It’s made for the Chinese export market, very attractive shape, high level of craftsmanship and very few still exist.”

Like most form watches, it’s a jewel. It’s art. It’s, according to the collector, “irresistible.”