Two of the eight dials on this reference carry stones and both of them belong to Everose. The other six grounds are unset, which reverses the balance found on the smaller gold cases, where set dials are the rule rather than the exception. Reference 126301 is the 41mm Datejust in a combination of stainless steel and Everose gold, carrying a smooth bezel, and this configuration pairs a chocolate dial set with twelve diamonds in gold settings, with no numerals on it, and a Jubilee bracelet. At this size the ground exists on the two Everose references only, in both its plain and its set form.
The case is forty-one millimeters in steel with an Everose gold bezel, crown and center links, and the rim is smooth rather than fluted. The dial is chocolate, a deep warm brown developed alongside the alloy and pitched close to it, with twelve round diamonds mounted at the hour positions in gold settings matched to the case. The mounts are doing a great deal here. Because the settings are the same warm metal as the bezel and the center links, and because the ground is dark, each stone arrives inside a small bright frame that separates it from the dial before the stone itself does any work. That is the opposite of how the same arrangement behaves on champagne or silver, where the mounts disappear into the ground and the stones carry the separation alone. There are no numerals, no batons and no printed indexes, so the ring and the date window are the only structure on the face. Nothing on the dial was added for decoration that is not also doing the work of a marker, which is a stricter arrangement than it appears and the reason the ground survives unset on the same reference. The Jubilee is built from five-piece links with the gold running in three narrow inner strips, which breaks the metal into small reflective units and gives the watch a bright wrist under a dark dial. The Oyster version of the same configuration keeps the gold in one continuous center line instead, which reads as more metal in fewer pieces and makes the stones on the dial the only fine detail on the watch.
Hours, minutes, running seconds and a date changing in one step at midnight. The self-winding movement in the 41mm case holds roughly seventy hours of running time, a longer reserve than the smaller Datejust cases carry and a different movement entirely. Nothing else has been added. The dial is read by position alone, since a diamond in a gold mount carries no information about which hour it marks, and the ring works only while it stays even; the date window at three is the single break it has to absorb. On a dark ground that break is easier to take than on a pale one, because a white disc against brown reads as deliberate contrast rather than as a hole in the surface. At forty-one millimeters the ring also sits further apart than the same twelve settings do at 31mm, so the individual stones read as separate objects rather than as a continuous circle, and the ground between them holds more of the watch. That is the main difference between this dial and the identical arrangement in the smaller cases, and it is why a set dial at this size looks less like jewelry than the same specification does one or two sizes down. Case size changes what a fixed number of stones means, and twelve is a small number once the dial is this wide.
Chocolate follows the Everose alloy wherever it goes. The set version is built at 28mm on five references, at 31mm on six in two arrangements, at 36mm on three, at 40mm on two and here on two, and the plain version runs across six case sizes while skipping 31mm entirely. At this size the two references carrying it are the smooth-bezel one and its fluted twin 126331, which share all eight grounds between them. The 41mm family is only six references deep and is built without several things the smaller cases take for granted: no solid gold, no set bezel, no President bracelet and no dial with an oversized numeral. Steel comes with the smooth rim alone, the white gold combination with the fluted rim alone, and the two warm combinations with both. That leaves the dial and the bracelet as the working variables on this reference, and with only two set grounds available the choice to have stones at all narrows the field to four watches: this ground and sundust, each in two bracelets. Which stones a buyer can have at this size is decided entirely by the metal. Everose sets chocolate and sundust, the two yellow references set bright black and champagne, the white gold one sets bright black, bright blue and slate, and the steel reference sets nothing at all.
This suits a buyer who wants a large watch with a small amount of jewelry on it. Twelve stones on a dark ground at forty-one millimeters is a lower density of setting than the same twelve produce at 31mm, and the watch reads as a warm two-metal Datejust with markers that happen to be diamonds rather than as a set piece. The smooth rim keeps the outside plain, which matters more here than it would on a fluted reference, since a fluted bezel and a set dial would put worked detail on both sides of the crystal. Anyone who wants the dial without stones should take the plain chocolate, built on this same reference with applied markers. Anyone who wants more brightness at the rim should take 126331, the fluted twin. And anyone who wants the setting to read more densely should look one or two sizes down, where the identical ring of twelve occupies a much smaller dial.
