Sabine Zwettler likes the flair of Norqain, a young, innovative brand bringing a fresh impulse by respecting the traditional values of the industry in general and Swiss codes in particular. She finds reading the time on this brand-new watch’s unusual green dial with its charming scratches a real pleasure. What do you think?
Colin Alexander Smith’s journey into what some call “watch fettling” began with a case of cat-killing curiosity: one of the subdial hands on a cheap watch had come loose, bringing it to a halt. That led him down a horological rabbit hole. Here he explains why you might want to consider a similar path.
To this day, when most people think about luxury watches they picture a wizened, white-haired man in a white lab coat bent over a workbench against the backdrop of snowy Alps busily filing away at watch parts. It’s a lovely picture, but not very representative of the modern – or even necessarily traditional – watch industry as Elizabeth Doerr explains here.
Ken Gargett thinks that the Penfolds Grange 2016 has a good 50 years ahead of it, for anyone planning their grandkids’ cellar. Giving this wine 100 points is one of the easiest things he has done in ages. And yet, the day after the wine seemed even better. Outstanding. And he rates the G4 as good as it gets. Cheers.
Complicated haute horlogerie doesn’t get much better than twin triple-axis spherical tourbillons as found in the Purnell Escape II Double Tourbillon. And while in some cases less is more, here more is definitely more. The tourbillons are mesmerizing in part thanks to their high rotation velocity; they make full revolutions in respectively 8, 16, and 30 seconds. What is behind this masterful piece of high watchmaking?
Many people believe resonance to be very rare, when in fact every single timekeeping device (yes, even quartz) is a resonant mechanism. But clocks and watches featuring resonance as we generally understand it in watchmaking are few and far between. In the last few decades, less than a handful of highly skilled watchmakers have taken up the challenge of creating a resonance watch. Here, Joshua Munchow looks at the pros and cons of the different approaches taken by the three leaders in this technology.
A good friend of GaryG’s owns a cream-dialed Reference 2526, and Gary has often admired it over the years, but hadn’t really understood the role that the 2526 plays in Patek Philippe’s history until talking with him and other watch pals and doing some late-night online research. Read on to learn why he bought this special “Gobbi Milano” edition from 1954 in an exciting spur of a moment.
Thrill of the chase. Intellectual satisfaction. Investment. There are nearly as many reasons for collecting things as there are things to collect. But when it comes to watches and writing instruments, a variety of shared motivations, perhaps catalyzed by the obvious common characteristics of the objects themselves, make them conspicuous crossovers for collectors.
During a visit to D.Dornblüth & Sohn in eastern Germany, Bhanu Chopra noticed a new matte black ceramic dial in the workshop and loved the look so much that he asked the independent watchmakers to replace the more standard silver dial on his Dornblüth 99.1 with the new black one. And he’s very pleased with the result.
You can like everything, but you can’t buy – or keep – everything! Inevitably, the choices involved lead at times to regrets; for GaryG, along with many of his pals, the sadness is much more often about pieces they sold too soon or failed to buy rather than pieces they were sorry about buying in the first place. Here’s a story of shoulda, woulda, coulda.