Rolex 1811 Day-Date

A checked version of this page, approved on 8 June 2026, was based on this revision.

Day-Date → 1811

The 1811 is the Morellis-finish Day-Date. It is a 4-digit President built on the same 36mm gold case and caliber 1555/1556 movement as the fluted 1803, set apart by a fine watered texture, the moiré or "Morellis" finish, on the bezel and the President bracelet's center links. The finish belongs to the same late-1960s fashion for decorated gold that produced the Florentine 1806 and the bark 1807. The Morellis is the rarest and least-seen of the three, made in small numbers and easy to misread, which is why it turns up in listings under several different names.

Core facts

detail	value
reference	1811
family	Day-Date
production	late 1960s into the 1970s (4-digit era)
movement	caliber 1555 (to c. 1965), then caliber 1556; hacking from 1972; no quickset
case	36mm 18k gold President — yellow, white, pink/rose gold
crystal	acrylic
bezel	Morellis (moiré) finish
bracelet	President with Morellis-finished center links
dial	the 4-digit Day-Date catalogue, shared with the 1803
crown	Twinlock screw-down
sibling references	1803 (fluted), 1804 (gem-set), 1806 (Florentine), 1807 (bark)
predecessor	originals-era 6610 / 6611 / 6612 cluster
successor	5-digit 18xxx era

Where it sits in the line

The 1811 is one of the 1803's decorated siblings, the group that split the 4-digit Day-Date by surface finish rather than by movement or size. The 1803 took the fluted bezel, the 1804 a gem-set bezel, the 1806 the Florentine cross-hatch, the 1807 the coarse bark, and the 1811 the Morellis moiré. Each carried its texture onto the bezel and, on the 1806, 1807 and 1811, onto the bracelet center links so the finish ran the length of the watch.

The naming is where the 1811 gets slippery. Specialist dealers and collectors settle on "Morellis" for its watered moiré texture; some listings call it Florentine, conflating it with the 1806; and earlier BezelBase entries described it as a smooth-bezel reference, which is wrong. The texture is the point of the 1811, and it is neither smooth nor the coarse bark of the 1807. Everything else is 1803: the 36mm gold case, the President bracelet, the caliber 1555/1556 movement and the dial catalogue all carry over, and the 1803 entry holds the full account.

Production outline

The Morellis 1811 ran through the late 1960s and into the 1970s alongside the plain 1803, in small numbers. No Rolex production figure has surfaced, and like the other textured references it sold slowly when new, which makes it scarce today. Documented examples cluster in the late 1960s on the caliber 1555 and run into the 1970s on the caliber 1556. The decorated-finish references faded as taste returned to polished and fluted gold, and the texture did not carry into the 5-digit era the way the bark did on the 18078.

Movement notes

The 1811 uses the standard 4-digit Day-Date movement: caliber 1555 from the start of the run, replaced by the caliber 1556 around 1965. The 1556 raised the beat to 19,800 vph and brought the free-sprung Microstella balance; hacking seconds arrived across the 1500 family in 1972. No 4-digit Day-Date has quickset, so date and day advance only by running the hands through midnight. The Reference:Movements page holds the caliber lineage, and the 1803 entry covers the 1555-to-1556 transition in detail.

Dial map

The 1811 carried the standard 4-digit Day-Date dials, champagne and silver with applied gold markers most common, and as a catalogue sibling of the 1803 it could take the same special dials. A champagne "Doorstop"-dial 1811 is among the documented examples. The dial does not define the reference; the Morellis finish does, and the 1803 entry carries the dial-variant taxonomy that applies across the 4-digit group.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

The case is the 36mm three-piece gold Oyster shared across the 4-digit Day-Date, with a Twinlock screw-down crown, screw-down caseback and acrylic crystal. The defining feature is the Morellis finish on the bezel, a fine watered or wavy moiré texture, more delicate than the Florentine cross-hatch of the 1806 and finer than the coarse bark of the 1807. It came in yellow, white and pink gold to match the case.

Bracelets, end links, and clasps

The 1811 wears the President, with the Morellis finish carried onto the bracelet's center links so the moiré texture runs the length of the bracelet rather than stopping at the bezel. As with any vintage President, a clasp date code dates the bracelet rather than the watch head, and the Reference:Bracelets page holds the cross-family bracelet detail. Decades of service often replaced textured center links with plain ones, so a 1811 that keeps its full original Morellis bracelet is the harder thing to find.

Special branches

The decorated 4-digit references

The 1811 belongs to a small group of textured 4-digit Day-Dates: the Florentine 1806, the bark 1807, and the Morellis 1811. All three apply a worked surface to the bezel and bracelet center links in place of the 1803's fluting; they read as a 1960s fashion that Rolex dropped as taste swung back to polished and fluted gold. Survivors are scarce, and the Morellis is the least common of the three. Because the textures are easy to confuse, reference attribution on these watches rests on matching the finish to the engraved reference number between the lugs rather than on the listing's label.

Auction record

The Morellis 1811 surfaces mainly through specialist dealers rather than the major auction houses, in line with its modest standing and small production. Documented examples run from the late 1960s into the 1970s in yellow gold, with the occasional special dial. As with the bark 1807, the value driver is an original textured bracelet: a 1811 retaining its full Morellis center links is worth more than the dial alone would suggest, since service swaps to plain links are common.

Sources