This new Harry Winston watch has something of the brand’s design DNA, with the three rectangular elements at the crown that are a reference to the historic boutique on Fifth Avenue in New York. In two versions, rose gold and white gold, the watch is 42 mm in diameter, 10.2 mm thick, and has a…
A watch with a moon phase indicator is a very familiar pattern, but Moongarden by Montblanc does something different. It also displays the name of each month’s full moon name, from Ice moon and Snow moon through to Harvest, Hunter and Oak moon (scroll down to read all the lunar month names and meanings). So…
This is the classic women’s watch, 35 mm in diameter, slim and elegant, with an interesting treatment of the moon phase complication, based on the work of Ludwig Oechslin, the horological mind behind so much of Ulysse Nardin’s work since 1983. The moon in its circular window rotates clockwise around the centre of the dial,…
The term “subscription watch,” or “souscription” in French, is usually associated with Abraham-Louis Breguet who, during the most violent years of the French Revolution between 1793 and 1795, moved from Paris to Switzerland and had the idea of this new way of selling his watches. Instead of making a watch and then trying to sell…
A moon phase watch is not unusual, there are lots. What is unusual about the Jaeger-LeCoultre Rendez-Vous Moon is that the moon phase has as an extraordinary degree of accuracy. A normal moon phase watch approximates the actual average duration of the lunar month, 29.530587981 days, to 29.5 days, by means of a wheel with 59 teeth…
The Portughese Perpetual Calendar Double Moon, presented at SIHH 2015 as the Portugieser Perpetual Calendar Double Moon reference 5034 (on the right above), is a good example of how a watch is redesigned. The 2010 version (on the left in the photo above) was very popular, and considered as perfect. How do you improve on…
Aerowatch is a Swiss brand founded in 1910, presently making models with mechanical and quartz movements. Their latest product is a very good-looking moon phase watch that has something of the classic Breguet-type looks, with blued hands, silver-finish dial with guilloché work in the central part, and Roman numerals. This vintage look is intentional, as…
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…
A. Lange & Söhne create brilliant, complex watches, but they don’t shout about it. One of the two great German watch brands (with Glashütte Original) based in Glashütte, near Dresden, A. Lange & Söhne delights its fans and collectors with watches whose complexity of functions is accompanied by wonderful movements and understated dial design. In…
If you like watches that look a bit different, De Bethune have something to offer you. Their Dream Watch 5.2 has a sort of unsettling sci-fi beauty, with the half-organic, half-mechanical forms of Alien, and the triangular innovation of Hamilton’s triangular watch in Men in Black. The digital time indications hark back to the electric…
Cartier presented some very original watches at SIHH in January 2014, and the Rotonde de Cartier Day and Night represents an unusual treatment of the moon phase. Usually, moon phase watches have a circular disc with two moons on it, which rotates behind an opening in the dial with two semicircular shapes, so that in…