In a watch, one of the most annoying components is the crown. It’s often hard to pull out, requires work with fingernails, and I imagine, if you’re a woman, it risks messing up the manicure or the varnish. Especially if the watch is the last thing that you take out of the drawer, and you…
It’s a quartz watch by Richard Mille, but not the sort of quartz watch disparaged by lovers of mechanical timepieces. In this instance the quartz is part of a new composite material used for the case, a combination of NTPT carbon and TPT quartz with an intense red colour produced by the red resin used…
This new collection of five watches by Glashütte Original have the bright colours that are becoming a familiar trend in contemporary watches. Slim, circular, thin enough to be a dress watch, their 39 mm case diameter makes them a unisex watch. Looking back to the Spezimatic They combine engaging colour and design with interesting historical…
The story of Omega and NASA is common knowledge, but there was another watch that went into space and was used on the moon. Dave Scott, commander of the Apollo 15 mission, took his own Bulova Chronograph with him as a back-up for the NASA-issue Omega Speedmaster, and used it during his extra-vehicular activities on…
This piece by Blancpain is a complication watch, not for the hand-wound calibre 15B movement that provides just hours and minutes, but for the subject matter on the dial. The more you look at the image the more you find. The Hindu god Ganesh has a trunk winding artfully around the central pivot, and is…
This watch was developed from the Tutima Military Chronograph, also known as the NATO, reference 798, introduced in 1984, a chronograph with centre-sweep chronograph seconds and minutes hands, and the unusual feature, for a watch of this type, of the day as well as the date. The NATO had a Lemania 5100 movement, a calibre…
The Villeret Collection by Blancpain comprises the brand’s most classical watches, and this year, for the first time, it includes a watch with big date display, with two windows for optimum legibility. The self-winding calibre 6950, with 285 components, was designed specifically to maintain the watch’s slim profile, and to allow a date change exactly and…
Company profile: Tutima is one of those heroic German brands in the sleepy valley of Glashütte, in Saxony, that thrived until the end of the Second World War, was destroyed by an air-raid, and was later reborn and went on to reach new levels of success. But the Tutima story is a little different from…
Longines are very active in the world of showjumping, and this watch was made specially to time the performance of a horse and rider in a showjumping competition. Its major characteristic is that it can measure lengths of time to the nearest one-hundredth of a second, by means of a quartz movement, which enables the…
Chronométrie Ferdinand Berthoud is a new brand owned by Chopard, whose Co-President Karl-Friedrich Scheufele acquired the right to use the name in 2006. Like other analogous relaunches of watchmakers of the past, such as Arnold & Son and Graham, Ferdinand Berthoud is not just a way of purchasing a chunk of watchmaking history: it reflects…
Only a few people know just how a watch like this comes into existence. I can only guess: I imagine Richard Mille sketching something rapidly on the back of an envelope, the idea of a watch that looks like it’s burning inside, flames coming up from deep inside the movement and consuming the dial. The…
The new Ikarus Klassik Sport by Stowa looks sleek and modern with its light grey rhodium-plated, bead-blasted dial, minimalist dial design and brushed steel case, but it is in fact very close to the original Stowa Flieger Baumuster Type A, as can be seen from the photo of a watch made in about 1939 below.…
Zenith is a symbol of continuity in watchmaking. Ever since its foundation in 1865 in Le Locle, it has been working at a factory at the same address. Its watches all have an in-house movement. This piece is based on their original pilot’s watch made for Louis Blériot in 1909. However, in addition to the…
I am of the opinion that a decorated object is a crafts piece if you look at it and think “How did he or she do that?” and it’s a work of art if you think “Why did he do that?” This is what sets apart a piece, say, of contemporary ceramics, very often all…
Company profile: Zenith was founded in 1865 in Le Locle by watchmaker Georges Favre-Jacot (born in 1843), and from then on it has been working at a factory at the same address. When he founded his company, Favre-Jacot was just 22, and he took a revolutionary step: instead of following the usual Swiss watchmaking system…
This watch by Hamilton is as cool as it was when worn by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black, and even earlier when it was the personal watch of Elvis Presley. The King would have celebrated his 80th birthday on 8 January 2015, and this is the reason for this relaunched watch’s…
Company profile: Hamilton was founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1892. It followed three other companies on the same premises. The short-lived Adams & Perry watch company had operated from 1874 to 1876, succeeded by the Lancaster Watch Company founded in 1877. Lancaster was purchased by Abram Bitner in 1886, who founded the Keystone Standard Watch…
This limited-edition series, 12 watches, is part of the Slim project by Hermès. The dial depicts the Koma Kurabe horserace organized every year at Kamigamo Shrine in Kyoto, amidst the springtime cherry blossom. Each dial is made of Sèvres porcelain, hand-painted by Buzan Fukushima, a master of the Japanese Aka-e painting technique. Below, Buzan Fukushima at…
The Slim d’Hermès project began in 2012 and it represents a quest on the part of La Montre d’Hermès to pare a watch down to the essentials. Designed by creative director Philippe Delhotal, all the Slim watches feature a new typeface by Philippe Apeloig, a designer who had already worked for Hermès but who knew…
Company profile: Someone who loves watches may be forgiven for paying less attention to a brand like Hermès that makes principally leather goods, perfumery and fashion garments. But in actual fact, Hermès makes beautiful watches, proving that quality in watchmaking is absolutely possible for a horizontally-diversified brand of this type – as is the case…