This limited-edition watch by De Bethune has a very theatrical presence, with the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl at the centre of the dial, indicating hours with its head, and minutes with its tail. The remarkable thing is that whatever the time, the coiled snake looks perfectly realistic, with no awkward joints. The hour markers are also…
This watch by De Bethune, presented at Baselworld 2015, has a lot of the classic De Bethune features, in part because it is an anniversary piece, marking ten years from their first DBS made for the 2005 Only Watch charity auction. The new DBS Tourbillon retains some of the features of the original, such as…
Company profile: De Bethune was founded in 2002 by Denis Flageollet, a fourth-generation watchmaker, and David Zanetta, a specialist in antique watches and clocks and an adviser for collectors. Like Michel Parmigiani, Flageollet gained a vast heritage of skill from his work restoring antique timepieces, in this case at the Le Locle watch museum. The…
In my experience, one of the practical problems with many conventional chronographs – the ones with two or three subdials for minutes and hours, which often end up looking a bit like a gas meter – is that they are often partly obscured by the minute or hour hand. These hands are usually much larger…