Urwerk are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, with the UR-T8. It’s like their previous UR 105 T-Rex, with a wandering hours display and a distinctive pyramid-studded carapace, but in the T8 the watch has been given two sides, one with the wandering hours left substantially open to view, and the other in which the…
A new version of a watch that is one of the best-selling models in the Speake-Marin collection, the 2017 New Brown Serpent Calendar has the same very three-dimensional dial of its predecessors, with an enlarged, convex calendar chapter ring, and now with a snailed-finish brown ring for the hours. All the rest of the habitually…
The Velsheda is one of Peter Speake-Marin’s most distinctive watches, with its single hand, an hour hand, with which you can read the time on the scale with 5-minute markings. In January 2017, Speake-Marin presented the Black Velsheda Gothic, for the first time with a black enamel dial. As in the previous version of the…
In 2016 and 2017, Peter Speake-Marin is presenting several pieces in small editions, in order to express many ideas without expanding the existing collection. At SIHH in Geneva in January 2017, the Wing Commander was presented in two limited editions, each 28 pieces, with white dials (an innovation with respect to previous Wing Commander models…
The Speake-Marin Crazy Skulls is a surprising watch, enormously ambitious, because it combines two of the most complex complications of all, the tourbillon and the minute repeater, with an animated dial that tells a story of love and death. There are a lot of design ideas here. It’s a notable achievement for a brand founded…
The New Blue Seafire is part of the Spirit collection by Speake-Marin, comprising men’s watches with a military inspiration. As is customary for the brand, this watch is completely different to anything else out there and in particular, it has nothing in common with the customary pilot’s watch aesthetic. There are distant echoes in the…
Romain Jerome first launched its Eyjafjallajökull-DNA watch in 2010, celebrating the eruption of the like-named volcano that for some days caused havoc in air traffic. It has already sold out two collections and so this year the brand is offering another piece, a limited edition of 99. The whole watch expresses rough, spiky lava, from…
The Moon Orbiter GMT by Romain Jerome is a new version of a watch first launched in 2015. Back then it was a very unusual watch, with a rectangular case and lugs with spring-loaded shock absorbers. This new version, presented in 2016, is a bit more conventional in appearance, with a circular case. The extra…
This lovely dive watch by Oris is dedicated to Carl Brashear, the U.S. Navy’s first African American master diver. Brashear, born in 1931, overcame racial descrimination in his long naval career that began when he was just 17, and in 1966 lost the lower part of his left leg following an accident during a mission to salvage a…
The new versions of the Panerai Luminor Submersible evoke toughness, with their big chunky cases. The Luminor Submersible 1950 3 Days Automatic Bronzo brings together two of the top trends in watches this season, bronze case and blue dial. The colour scheme is enhanced by the beige SuperLuminova on dial markings and hands. And that…
The intelligent design that hallmarks all watches by Ressence can already be seen in the name. Type 12, giving the idea of the second version of type 1 Type 1.2), but also Type 1 Squared, expressing the fundamental difference, a cushion-shaped case that adds an element of tradition and makes it dressier. Other new features…
Company profile: Ressence was founded in 2010 by Benoît Mintiens in Antwerp, Belgium. The name is derived from the words “Renaissance” and “essence”. Mintiens is an industrial designer, whose curriculum includes work on Eurostar and SNCF trains, first-class interiors for Air France, and vacuum cleaners for LG. He first encountered watch design in 2004 when…
Bronze is not just a trend, it’s a mega trend. Along with blue dials, it’s one of the most transversal developments in contemporary watches, at all levels of price. The Sequential Two S220 Bronze by Manufacture Contemporaine du Temps has the classic rotating-prisms architecture to show the hours on very large numerals, with a conventional…
Laurent Ferrier trained at the Geneva school of watchmaking, and, like all watchmakers, completed the course by constructing his own “school piece.” It expressed his ambition of perpetuating fine 19th century watchmaking. In the Galet Micro-Rotor Montre Ecole, Laurent Ferrier celebrates that piece, and translates the pebble-like rounded smoothness of pocket watches into a wristwatch.…
Company profile: Roger Dubuis is a brand that is proud of its relatively short history, just over 20 years. This enables it to make watches that are totally original, because they don’t have to look back to precedents back in the company archive. In many of their watches, you get the impression that they are…
The Vingt-8 ISO by Kari Voutilainen does something unusual for a wristwatch: it presents a different way of telling the time. There are still the hour and minute hands, and a conventional hour scale, but the minutes scale at the edge of the dial rotates at the same speed as the hour hand. So every…
Hautlence is dedicated to making watches that tell time in a different way, as in this piece, Vortex Bronze. The Vortex was first presented in 2015 in a titanium case, and at SIHH 2017, Hautlence presented a new edition of 8 pieces in bronze. It has the same innovative HL2.0 movement, and similar case architecture.…
The Cosmic Green by H. Moser is another expression of the brand’s stance with respect to the “Swiss Made” concept, and the fact that legislation on use of this label doesn’t offer much of a guarantee to customers buying a watch. Neither does it help people working in the Swiss watch industry. I don’t think…
The Venturer Small Seconds XL Paramagnetic by H. Moser & Cie. has a balance spring made from the new alloy PE5000, developed by the company Precision Engineering AG, part of Moser Watch Holding. PE5000 is shock-resistant and paramagnetic, and, after a development period of 7 years, it is now being used in a watch for…
The 1941 Remontoire is the fourth watch introduced by the horological brothers Bart and Tim Grönefeld. They have already achieved a lot: an independent watch brand based in Oldenzaal, in the Netherlands, is in competition with the “Swiss Made” concept. Their movements are hand-crafted in-house, and so their watches are not cheap. But business is…