Watchmaking brand Parmigiani Fleurier revealed that it is working on a new watch movement that could produce a revolution in the mechanical watch industry. Normally a mechanical watch has a power reserve – the time that the watch will keep running from when its mainspring is fully wound – of about 40 hours, with some,…
One of the most surprising things that is happening in high-end watches is that the hallowed ground of mechanical movements is beginning to be violated by electronics. One example is the Piaget Emperador Coussin XL 700P presented at SIHH 2016, which has a totally mechanical gear train powered by a conventional oscillating weight, but also…
The first timepieces in history were the earth and the moon. Our prehistoric ancestors observed the sequences of day and night, the seasons and the phases of the moon, and used them to devise the earliest forms of measuring time. In this watch by Bovet 1822, the case, 46 mm in diameter and 18 mm…
In its most recent watches, H. Moser is showing attention not only to engineering, design and marketing, but also to the sociological aspects of watchmaking. The Concept Watch presented in May 2015 has a dial reduced to the bare minimum: the brand’s hallmark graded fumé dial, three hands, but no indices, logo, or any other…
Audemars Piguet is one of the oldest watch manufacturers still controlled by its founding families, and its history is closely linked to Switzerland’s watchmaking history. Both the Audemars and the Piguet families were living in the Vallée de Joux, and in the 1700s they, like many families in this area with very hard winters, were…
Autodromo is a brand founded in Brooklyn by Bradley Price, industrial designer with a passion for motoring and more specifically, Italian cars such as Alfa Romeo and Lancia. Even the name evokes the motor-racing circuit at Monza, location of the Italian Formula One Grand Prix. After the 2014 Autodromo Stradale, an automatic watch based on…
H. Moser’s first perpetual calendar won the GPHG Grand Prix in 2006; the watch was relaunched in 2013, and it is still a fresh-looking piece in the realm of perpetual calendars that usually have lots of subdials and windows. The Endeavour Perpetual Calendar Funky Blue, a version launched in 2015 at about the same time…
Company profile: Heinrich Moser was born, ninth in a family of twelve children, in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, in 1805, into a family with watchmaking traditions: his grandfather Johannes, and his father Erhard were watchmakers. His birthplace is still visible, the house named “Zum blauen Himmel” on Lower Vordergasse. Heinrich trained under his father and grandfather and…
Slim enough to be a dress watch, but with one of the most challenging complications of all: the minute repeater. The Patrimony calibre 1731 by Vacheron Constantin is now available in platinum, in addition to the 2013 pink gold version, with two dial colours that add style and sobriety. The 1731 movement is 3.9 mm…
Until this piece was presented in September 2015, the record for the most complicated watch in the world was held by Patek Philippe and its Calibre 89, a gigantic pocket watch 9 cm in diameter, 4 cm thick, weighing 1.1 kg, containing 1,728 parts, two dials and 24 hands, for a total of 33 functions…
These four watches are new models of pieces already launched in November 2014. Vacheron Constantin are presenting them as a preview to the watch fair SIHH that begins on 18 January 2016. The watches are 37 mm in diameter and set with 194 diamonds, and each has a different style of decoration. In my view…
HYT has been asking itself what its watches would look like if they had been made in the 18th century. The result is the H2 Tradition, with the same H2 fluid engineering as in the original H2 watch launched in 2013, with hours shown by blue fluid in a capillary tube and driven by two…
The Apple Watch was announced by Tim Cook on 9 September 2014, and it immediately sent shivers through the spines of everyone involved in the mechanical watch industry, in particular in Switzerland. This was understandable, because in the 1970s, the introduction of cheap quartz watches from Japan and the United States put about two-thirds of…
Blancpain has presented its 16th Valentine’s day watch, a small, elegant and romantic piece, whose highlight is a removable charm in the shape of a white gold arrow with ruby heart. It can be attached at 12 or 6 o’clock as desired. Blancpain’s charms first appeared at Baselworld 2015, though to be honest they are…
This watch, one of Cartier’s new pieces to be introduced at SIHH later this month (January 2016) shows that there is still plenty of room to invent new functions and new styles of display, as long as you have the capability of designing your own movement. This is a watch for women by Cartier, and…
Clé de Cartier was one of the brand’s most interesting innovations at the SIHH watch fair in January 2015, with a crown that is easy to pull out and operate because of its rectangular shape. While a small circular crown requires robust fingernails to pull it out, with the Clé de Cartier, you just have…
Company profile: Wempe, based in Hamburg, Germany, has boutiques all over the world, and it is an official retailer for many high-end watch brands. The company also makes its own timepieces in Glashütte, and it designs and makes jewellery. Its watch collection includes various types of timepieces, such as dress watches, sport watches, diver’s and…
Four years after the last pilot’s watch collection by IWC Schaffhausen presented at SIHH in 2012, this year the brand is once again renewing its range of watches inspired by historic aviation patterns. IWC’s production in this area is significant because amongst the brands making versions of the classic Second World War B-Uhr watches (Beobachtungs-uhren,…
Hautlence introduced its HLQ calibre – which, like the brand’s very first HL movement, had jumping hours on the left and retrograde minutes on the right, but with the addition of a date window at the bottom of the dial – in 2009, and the HLQ calibre saw the light in 2013. In 2015, two…
The HL Black Ceramic is a good example of Hautlence’s mission to create different ways of telling the time. It is the new version of an existing model – the Hautlence HL, the brand’s very first calibre presented a couple of years after the brand’s foundation in 2004 – with jumping hours on the left,…