It’s SIHH week! And already, our California collector group was off to a splendid start with our traditional Saturday evening dinner with friend and genius watchmaker Kari Voutilainen.
Voutilainen brought along several of the watches that he will be presenting this week at SIHH and was kind enough to grant permission for us to show them here before the official start of the show.
One limitation was that the lighting in our usual dinner place is absolutely diabolical; nonetheless, with a combination of supplemental light sources, high ISO settings, and some white balance adjustment in post-processing I was able to capture decent photos of three of the new offerings.
First up: a navy-dialed Vingt-8 in white gold, seen first inside of my makeshift tabletop light tent.
New watch for 2016 SIHH: Kari Voutilainen Vingt-8
And, on my wrist, wearing nicely as Kari’s watches always do.
Voutilainen Vingt-8 white gold on the author’s wrist
The hit of the evening with MrsG was a unique GMT-6 in platinum with blue and orange enameled guilloche dial and enameled officer case back. Here are three shots: front and back on the table and then on the wrist of a (very happy) MrsG.
Unique Voutilainen GMT-6 in platinum: new for SIHH 2016
Officer back of the unique Voutilainen GMT-6 in platinum
Unique Voutilainen GMT-6 in platinum worn by the author’s wife
The hands and markers on these pieces are very interesting: while they look almost white, they are in fact made of gold that is “wet sandblasted” (an imprecise translation of the French-language term) and then treated with rhodium.
MrsG and I were also delighted to see a rendering of the watch that Kari is developing for Basel. I can’t say too much about it, but can reveal that it is being made with ladies in mind and will, in its own way in my opinion, rival the Hisui that won the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève for its creative use of decorative media.
There were a few other pieces, including a wonderful “all-black” Vingt-8 with a “black gold” treated frosted movement, but I’d rather let you see the official photos than my relatively un-viewable shots. I’ll leave you with one final image of a fantastic burgundy-dialed Vingt-8 and urge you to stay tuned here at Quill & Pad for more throughout the week!
Parting shot: Voutilainen Vingt-8 in white gold with burgundy enamel sial
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It’s nice to get to see creations before others, but it doesn’t do the artist any good to have mediocre pictures of his work out there.
I guess you can file this one under no good deed goes unpunished.
Well, I’m sorry that the images were not to your taste — but having seen these watches again in better light at the show and viewed many of the published photos of them, I’m quite satisfied that my photos above are absolutely fair representations of Kari’s watches and present them favorably.
In addition, I believe that there are real merits to presenting “live” photos of watches as seen on the wrist and in the wild in addition to “studio” photos under carefully controlled conditions — and I’m often asked to provide more of the former to complement my more formal watch portraits.
There were watches (e.g., the “all black Vingt-8) at the dinner that I photographed but for which I did not feel that I captured acceptable images, and so did not include them in this article.
That said, I’ll gratefully accept your feedback and strive for continued improvement in the future.
Best,
GaryG
I think that GaryG’s photos in this article are excellent (as usual). It is a real treat to hear about SIHH from the perspective of a high-end collector. Keep it up!
Thank you very much for your kind words and support!
Best,
Gary