Three grounds on this reference exist in both a plain and a set form, and black is one of them. Champagne and olive green are the others. Silver and shell arrive only with stones, slate and white only without, and the remaining configurations are fixed one way or the other, so the decision between a set dial and an unset one is available on a quarter of what the reference offers and nowhere else. Black is the ground where that decision changes the watch most, because a dark surface gives diamonds more to work against than any other dial here and gives applied numerals exactly the same advantage. Whichever way the ground is finished, black is the surface that flatters what sits on it, which is not true of the metallic and shell dials the reference also carries.
Bright black is a lacquered surface with a hard reflective finish rather than a matte one, and the distinction carries the dial. A matte ground absorbs light and reads flat; this one returns it from a smooth surface, so the black holds depth and reflections travel across it as the wrist turns. The markers are Roman numerals applied in gold, tall and narrow with fine serifs, standing proud with polished faces, and against a dark ground they sit at the highest contrast the reference produces. That contrast also inverts the usual reading of a two-tone case. On champagne or olive green the dial leans warm and the steel recedes; here the dial is cooler than either metal in the case, so the steel in the bracelet becomes the warm element by comparison and the gold reads as warmer still. The bezel is domed, a smooth continuous curve with no cuts or facets, which leaves the numerals as the only worked element on the head of the watch apart from the rim itself. The case is 36mm with the Jubilee bracelet running from it in five-piece links. The Jubilee splits its width into five links rather than three, with the outer pairs in steel and the inner three in gold, so the warm metal arrives as narrow strips separated by cool ones rather than as a single band. More links across the same width also means more articulation points, which is why the bracelet follows the wrist closely instead of bridging it. Against a black dial that construction reads as busier than the Oyster does, since the bracelet is catching light in many small increments while the face is giving almost none back.
The date at three is the whole of what this model does beyond the time, and on a dial with a numeral at every hour the window takes one of their places. The character at three gives way to it and the ring breaks at a single point, which the eye stops noticing almost immediately. There is no day aperture and no second indication, so the surface carries numerals, two hands and one opening and nothing further. A printed disc matches a deep flat black closely, more closely than it matches any other ground the reference offers, since the color has depth enough to absorb a small discrepancy and the contrast with a light numeral is the most legible arrangement available. The date sits beneath a lens set into the crystal and the movement runs roughly seventy hours off a full wind. What the model declines to do belongs in the same account. No Datejust has ever carried a second time zone, a chronograph or any indication beyond the date, so the dial holds a numeral ring, two hands and one window and nothing else has been added to it in the model's entire run. On a black ground with gold numerals that restraint is visible rather than merely true, because there is nothing on the surface to distract from how little is being asked of it.
Twelve dial configurations are offered here, each on both bracelets, which gives twenty-four watches. Two grounds carry a choice of markers, white and olive green, and black is not among them: it arrives with Roman numerals and no alternative. Five of the twelve are set and seven are not, and the marker choice belongs entirely to the unset side of that division. Across the wider size, nine references divide by metal and bezel without repeating a combination, steel taking a domed bezel alone, the steel and white gold combination taking fluted and diamond-set but never domed, and the two warm combinations taking all three treatments. Black arrives with Roman numerals and no alternative, as eight of the ten grounds here do. Only white and olive green are presented with a choice between numerals and applied batons, so on this dial the marker treatment was settled before the buyer ever saw it. Bright black does get the other choice the reference offers, since it is one of three grounds available both plain and set, alongside champagne and olive green, and the set version puts stones where these markers sit rather than adding them alongside the batons. That is a different kind of decision entirely.
Black with gold Roman numerals under a domed bezel is the most legible watch the reference makes and the least demonstrative. Nothing on it is set, the rim is smooth, and the only gold on the face is in the numerals themselves, so the watch reads as restrained from any distance while remaining readable at a glance in any light. Collectors comparing it to the set version of the same ground usually find the choice easier than expected: the stones make a considerably louder watch and give up none of the legibility, so the decision is about how much attention the piece should attract rather than about how well it works. For a buyer who wants a two-tone Datejust that behaves like a plain one, black and Roman numerals is where that sits. The set version of the identical ground is available on the same reference for anyone who wants the opposite, and it gives up nothing in legibility to get there.
