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.
Timepiece repairs can be expensive and often take a long time, so you generally want to avoid damaging a watch. Here John Keil lists five common things you may not be aware of that can damage a watch and how to prevent them.
For the Gravity Equal Force Ultimate Sapphire, Armin Strom teamed up with Kari Voutilainen to give the backplate a refined guilloche motif. We clearly see the hand of the master in this: while the design of the guilloche is not particularly outgoing, it shows its refinement in the way that it is draped around the other parts of the watch. It gently directs the eye to all the right places, allowing admiration for this technical-looking piece to grow.
Complication abounds in the 2021 GPHG Calendar and Astronomy category: two perpetual calendars – one of which is of world record-holding thinness – a complete calendar with chronograph, a clever day-date that you can’t help but smile at, a mind-blowingly beautiful moon phase watch, and the world’s smallest planetarium. And our panel members all (well, nearly all) have different favorites to win!
When Bell & Ross introduced the BR 05 in 2019, Martin Green wasn’t a big fan. But he had a completely different reaction when he first set eyes on the attractive and efficient BR 05 GMT. The extra hand with red-tipped luminous arrow and a chapter ring with 24-hour indices made all the difference for him.
Van Halen was the catalyst kicking off Elizabeth Doerr’s lifelong passion for rock music as the first band she stumbled across in this genre (but most certainly not the last). One cursory listen to “Eruption” and she was hooked on rock for life. In honor of the anniversary of Eddie Van Halen’s untimely death on October 6, 2020, cue “Eruption” and take a look at three tasteful and fun watches the guitar god owned and wore.
If you do not know what black pudding is you may be thinking a decadent dessert, perhaps a very dark chocolate cake type of thing. If you do know what it is then you are either suddenly thinking of how delicious it is and how long before you can next enjoy one or you are running for the hills, thinking how utterly disgusting and how on earth could anyone even look at one, let alone eat it. Here is all you ever needed to know about black pudding.
The Iconic category emphasizes men’s or women’s watches from a brand’s emblematic collection, meaning one that has had a lasting influence on watchmaking and its history as well as having been on the market for more than 20 years. Five of the watches pre-selected here are either time-only or time with date; one lone chronograph completes the set.
ArtyA’s new Purity Tourbillon is a stunning watch combining an ultra-minimal skeletonized tourbillon movement with a perfectly clear and super-strong sapphire crystal case. ArtyA never shies away from extreme aesthetics, but the Purity Tourbillon is extreme in a more mainstream way, and Joshua Munchow thinks it has a lot going for it.
Watch- and clockmaking has a long history in Germany, as evidenced by the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century timepieces from the Nuremberg/Augsburg area and the academic discussions of Peter Henlein, who is said to have made the world’s first pocket watch around 1505. But the country’s roots in great watchmaking do not stop there: Elizabeth Doerr takes us on an historical journey of Glashütte, the birthplace of modern Germany’s fine watches.