This is definitely the year of world timer watches. Most world timer watches have a fairly standardised appearance, with the city ring at the outside of the dial, and a 24-hour ring just inside. A few brands have taken a different approach, such as Montblanc with its recent 1858 Geosphere. The Globetrotter by Arnold &…
When a watch brand starts using the words Ultra Thin, you know that they’re after a world record even though they may not admit it. Most of the thinness records are held by Piaget, but Jaeger-LeCoultre have also ventured into this area, and more recently Bulgari have been creating some excellent super-slim watches. Arnold &…
This is what happens when a watchmaking company has the capability to design and build its own movements, and also possesses a healthy sense of creativity. You get something that – at last – looks completely different. It’s a different approach to the trade: instead of buying a ready-built movement from ETA, Sellita or Miyota…
The Eight-Day Royal Navy by Arnold & Son is a watch in steel with – considering most of the brand’s timepieces – a relatively accessible price. It probably reflects the trend, visible throughout watchmaking, of widening price range to include a wider market segment. The watch is an example of the company’s objective of celebrating…
Company profile: Arnold & Son was launched in 1995 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, yet in 2014 the brand celebrated its 250th anniversary by presenting five new manufacture movements. How can a brand just two decades old have two and a half centuries of history? By the purchase of the right to use the name of…
Arnold & Son say that this is the first “wandering hours and true beat seconds” watch, inspired by mid-18th century table clocks. Without doubt it is an unusual way of showing the time, by a company whose mission is, at least in part, dedicated to throwing more light onto the historical importance of British watchmaker…
John Arnold was a watchmaker working in the late 1700s, and, together with Abraham-Louis Breguet, he did a lot to shape modern watches, introducing inventions such as the overcoil balance spring, and working with the great French watchmaker on innovations such as the tourbillon. The very first tourbillon movement was actually built by Breguet and…
This watch, in a 46mm red gold case, 12.28 mm thick, has a lot of traditional watchmaking features, but its open-dial design gives it a modern appearance. The design is cleverly laid out with perfect symmetry, revealing how energy flows from the first mainspring barrel (on the right) on to the second barrel on the…
Blue dials and moon phase indications have been popular watch themes for the last couple of years, and in this piece, Arnold & Son put them together and make the moon phase bigger and better. The whole dial is dedicated to the moon phase window, something that is usually relegated to just a subdial, and…
One of the features of a mechanical watch is that the seconds hand doesn’t tick seconds, but seems to move in a near-constant sweep. On closer examination, you see that it moves in small pulses, each much less than a second. A quartz watch, on the other hand, ticks one second at a time. The…