While the Hermès Dressage L’heure masquée is an ingenious watch with an original movement designed to express an unusual concept of time, the Arceau Temari by Hermès is a jewellery watch in which the motif on the dial is the principal feature. Temari is a Japanese word meaning “hand ball.” They were made from remnants…
Today is 26 September 2014, which means we’re nearly there, nearly at the fourth quarter of the year. For the watch industry, the fourth quarter is very important, because it ends with the gift-giving season, and so it’s a time of year when watch brands want to stay very close to the market, introducing new…
The latest watch by MB&F is called HM5, and its main characteristic is its sleek black colour. Instead of using a conventional black PVD coating, MB&F looked for another material, and as they couldn’t find anything black, steely and polishable, they asked a supplier to develop a new material. The result was CarbonMacrolon, a black…
The Stirrup collection was introduced in 2009 and is still a cornerstone of the Ralph Lauren collection, with models for men and women. Ralph Lauren is a lifestyle brand, making garments and accessories in its instantly recognizable sport-influenced style, and so it was only natural that they should launch their own watches as well, with…
The first watch made by Jean-Marc Vacheron in 1755 already had an openworked, engraved balance-cock, and over its 260 years of history, the brand’s craftspeople have become expert in this art. The Malte Tourbillon Openworked, reference 30135/000P-9842, is a mechanical, manually-wound watch, in a large case in platinum, 38 x 48 mm, 12.73 m thick.…
Grand Lange 1 Moon Phase, reference 139.025 August the Strong, Elector of Saxony, founded Europe’s first collection of scientific instruments, the “art chamber” in Dresden, in 1728, and it is now the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon in the Zwinger building, Dresden. For many years, it was a research institution, and the local time for Dresden was set…
Poinçon de Genève, the Geneva Seal, is a quality mark introduced in 1886 to certify the quality of watches and that they were entirely made in the city or Canton of Geneva. It was created because at that time, in the late 19th century, a few Geneva retailers were “importing” watches from Vaud or Neuchâtel…
Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton presented their own special-edition watches by IWC Schaffhausen, with each edition limited to 250. IWC have a partnership with the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team, in an agreement that has been renewed until 2018. Not surprisingly, both watches are chronographs in the Ingenieur range, presented at…
Insulting? According to Yann Gamard, CEO of Glashütte Original, Nayla Hayek asked him to make a watch that “wouldn’t insult her.” Perhaps the insulting things that she had in mind was wtaches that are just downsized men’s watches, or watches covered from top to bottom in diamonds. In any case, the result was the Pavonina…
F.P. Journe is a company that doesn’t make many watches. Somewhere between 800 and 900 a year. So approximately a thousand times less than Rolex. But they all have a distinctive appearance, often inspired by 18th-century watchmaking thought. François-Paul signs all his pieces with the Latin motto “Invenit et Fecit” reflecting that golden age in…
The De Ville Trésor was a watch by Omega made in the late 1940s, a slim, classic timepiece, the perfect dress watch and ideal for everyday use. Omega has now presented a new version, 40 mm in diameter, and 10.6 mm thick. The silver dial has a clous de Paris texture, with baton hour indices…
This article on the best perpetual calendar watches 2015 look at these challenging timepieces, which require a lot of movement development. A lot of information has to be displayed, and at certain moments, a lot of energy has to be available to change several indications at once. For example, at midnight on 31st December, day,…
One of the favourite types of mechanical watch is the chronograph, the complication that enables it to be used as a stopwatch as well as for telling the time. It’s probably the most practical complication of all (after the calendar complications), and not just for racing: it can be used for a variety of everyday…
Yesterday, 9th September 2014, Apple presented their Apple Watch, with a video with commentary by Jony Ive (Senior VP, Design, at Apple). There’s lots of good stuff. I think it will work well on the market. The pre-launch gossip included the phrase “Switzerland are worried about the iWatch.” I don’t think that’s the case. But…
Pulsometer chronograph watches (sometimes they are called pulsimeter chronographs) were once more common than they are today. They were used by doctors for taking a patient’s pulse. A pulsometer chronograph is a normal chronograph with an extra scale around the edge of the dial: all you do is start the chronograph, count 30 pulse beats,…
Jeanrichard’s collection is based on four major families, Terrascope, Aquascope, Aeroscope and 1681, the latter named after the year in which Daniel Jeanrichard made his first watch and then set up his first workshop in Les Bressels, near La Chaux-de-Fonds. The brand has a lot of heritage, but today they are strongly connected to the…
This watch is an Enicar Automatic Sherpa Superdive. The caseback shows an oyster and pearl in relief, the word “Seapearl” and various other rather worn lettering, including the word “Ultrasonic.” Is it worth buying and restoring a watch like this? Enicar is one of the many Swiss brands that were thriving until the onset of…
This question was prompted by the new Tourbillon RM56-02 Sapphire by Richard Mille, and also by one of those ironic paradoxes floating around the Internet. If the black box on an aircraft is indestructible, why don’t they make the whole aircraft from that material? In watches, sapphire glass is used for the watch glass and…
In this article I will try to explain how a mechanical watch works. Why? Just because I am fascinated by these objects which may seem completely useless because even the most expensive high-end watch will be less accurate than a 40-euro quartz watch. But for centuries, mechanical clocks and watches were the only method of…
It was a highlight of Baselworld in 2013, and it is still very much a highlight in 2014. The Girard-Perregaux Constant Escapement L.M. is one of the very few significant new ideas in watchmaking in recent years, with not just a new movement, but a new escapement, the first after the pallet escapement invented by…