Auction house Sotheby’s will stage an auction in New York on June 11, 2015 featuring items from a private collection of musical automata within its sale of important watches. The auction pieces, mainly made for export to royalty throughout Europe, Turkey, India, and China, are headed up by a singing bird scent flask made by Pierre Jaquet-Droz in 1785.
Richard Mille introduced the RM 60-01 Regatta Flyback Chronograph during an annual event held on the beautiful Caribbean island of St. Barth: the exciting young regatta called Voiles de St. Barth. The 60-01 was conceived and designed for open-sea racing with a unique titanium rotating bezel containing an integral compass and a special crown/pusher locking system.
One pen that really caught my eye at the 2015 edition of Baselworld was the Montegrappa Cult Q1, which offers a first in the world of fine writing instruments. The Q1 can be loaded with four different ink colors that may be exchanged mid-sentence.
While we see Polaris as the North Star for now, our descendents 20 generations down the road from now will not. This is due to an astronomical process called precession. There is something that mimics precession that you can wear on your wrist and pass on to those descendents: the Jaeger-LeCoultre Duomètre Sphérotourbillon Moon, the most recent addition to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s already stacked Duomètre collection.
Michael Kobold and explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes created the Kathmandu Fire Truck Expedition, which will see a group of adventurers drive several fire engines from Kolkata (Calcutta) to Kathmandu. But before they could set out on this harrowing expedition planned for December 2015, Kathmandu was devastated by an unimaginable earthquake on April 25, 2015. Find out about the Fire Truck Expedition and how you can help Kobold and his admirable team help Kathmandu.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Michael Kobold first went to Kathmandu together in 2008, the latter having spontaneously decided to accompany his ambassador on a Mount Everest summit bid. They did not make it to the summit, but Kobold came back in 2009 and 2010 to successfully complete his bids despite life-endangering complications, becoming the first German national to summit Everest twice along the way. What then transpired is innovative and thankful.
For those of you who are regular readers of my “Behind the Lens” series, it’s no secret that my watch pals and I are big fans of independent watchmaking.
Here at Quill & Pad we’re also fans of the independents, prominently including Irish watchmaking brothers John and Stephen McGonigle.
Recently, I had the opportunity to photograph an example of the Tuscar One in Ten owned by a good friend. Let’s take a look at some of the results.
“This is a kind of homage for me,” Romain Gauthier explained as he showed me his superbly finished HMS Ten at Baselworld 2015. Gauthier celebrates a milestone with the appropriately named wristwatch: ten years of his company’s existence as a boutique watch brand. While this watch appears solidly classic in style at first glance, don’t be fooled by that. It contains a number of elements that are bound to make it an interesting evergreen in the years to come: compelling movement design, intriguing dial design, and great crown placement.
In honor of ten years of the Big Bang, Hublot brought five bona fide rock stars to Baselworld 2015 to play a small concert for its clients to celebrate this grand achievement, thereby forming an extraordinary ‘80s supergroup: singer Sebastian Bach (Skid Row), guitarist Tommy Thayer (Kiss), bass player Jack Blades (Night Ranger and Damn Yankees), keyboard player Teddy “Zig Zag” Andreadis, who has toured with Guns N’ Roses, and watch aficionado and drummer from Kiss, Eric Singer.
The long-awaited recent release of the ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ trailer delights me to no end (it is also nice to see that Ben Affleck might actually turn out be a decent Batman; the few seconds of him in the trailer were shockingly good in my opinion). Without further ado, I’d like to call to memory a few timepieces that have commemorated Batman in recent history by Jaeger-LeCoultre, Romain Jerome, and Montegrappa.