Blast from the past! This post is a “reprint” of an article Ian wrote that was first published on The PuristS in 2005 and it covers Felix Baumgartner, Urwerk, the Harry Winston Rare Timepieces Opus V, the Urwerk 103.03, plus an Urwerk 103.03 user review. Enjoy!
The most common choice for classic dress watches has to be gold, but have you ever wondered where that gold originally came from? And by “originally” Ian Skellern isn’t referring to a gold mine on earth but the original source of the gold before it even arrived on our planet. Spoiler alert: it involves an explosion, a very big explosion!
To mark its 50th anniversary in 2009, the International Museum of Horology in Le Locle, Switzerland launched an international chronometry competition. This effectively broke a long drought of 37 years since the last timing trial, which was held by the Observatory of Neuchâtel back in 1972. So what’s going on now?
There are a plethora of places to see in Porto − the city center is a UNESCO World Heritage site − but one absolute must for wine aficionados is to spend a couple of hours across the river Douro in Vila Nova de Gaia visiting a Port house and tasting the wines. Follow me on such a journey . . . saude!
Ian Skellern still remembers the sense of awe he felt when he had the opportunity to watch and listen to a recently restored centuries-old Jaquet Droz singing bird. The animation was compelling, and the quality of the birdsong sound was incredible. But as impressive a feat he thought that full-sized eighteenth-century Jaquet Droz singing bird clock was, shrinking that mechanical technology to wristwatch size is just mind-blowing. As The Naked Watchmaker, Peter Speake-Marin, highlights here.
This is a family affair: a story of Ian’s wife Brigitte, her horse Gucci, his father Neil, and an engraved Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Classique. And this is a good example of how and why you might want to commission a work of art on the back of a Reverso.
Here is the complete list of winners at the 2019 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG). You might not be surprised that there are surprises.
The 2019 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève is scheduled to begin at 6:30 pm Central European Time. Follow the big night on Quill & Pad and let us know your thoughts on the winners (and losers).
The most interesting aspect of the Aiguille d’Or is how the winner won’t always be the most complicated, expensive, or groundbreaking. To win the Aiguille d’Or, a watch needs to be a fantastic all-around watch and have that little something extra, that ‘je ne sais quoi.’ So which watch has our panel set its sights upon? There is much discussion, of course . . .
The GPHG Challenge category should probably more accurately be called the “Bang For Your Buck” category because this really is where you can see just how much watch you can get for your hard-earned dollar. But our panel is quite split on which watch delivers the most for the least.