Paradoxically, the SIHH really begins at least a day before its doors open; Sunday is the time to visit the smaller brands holding private exhibitions Geneva. So we put on our Sunday best and headed into town for a busy day of meetings with De Bethune, Urwerk, Laurent Ferrier, Revelation, Christophe Claret, Speake-Marin.
As much as we try to cover all the horological news that matters on Quill & Pad, despite our best intentions we just can’t write about absolutely everything. If only somebody could develop a platform to aggregate all of the news from the best watch blogs so it can all be viewed in one place.
Well somebody has and it’s called Watchville.
While $450,000 (give or take a bit of change) isn’t a sum that even the richest among us is likely to scoff at, it’s quite possible that a more expensive belt buckle exists that I don’t know about. However, it’s very unlikely that any buckle exists that comes even close to the high levels of sophistication and engineering found in the Roland Iten R822 Predator. The diamonds really are just the icing on the cake.
The days getting shorter and the nights much cooler remind us that the holidays are fast approaching, so it’s the perfect time to have a close look at a watch that would look great under under any angel-topped, tinsel-covered tree: the Christophe Claret X-TREM-1 Chocolate.
It’s no surprise that it took Richard Mille many years to find a suitable location for a flagship London boutique: the brand was not looking for the right space in London, it was looking in the right space in Mayfair.
And in 90 Mount Street, Mayfair, London, Richard Mille found it.
Like many (though certainly not all) of the luxury brands in the area, the Richard Mille boutique is relatively unassuming from the outside. However, two large, frosted images of Richard Mille’s instantly-recognizable, tonneau-shaped case on the front windows provide a fairly substantial clue for those familiar with the brand.
The fact is that Urwerk is a small brand, albeit an extremely imaginative and talented small brand, with very limited resources available. That means that if Urwerk wants to use resources to develop and produce a new model, it first has to stop producing one of the older models. So unfortunately it’s soon to be bye-bye to the UR-110. But fortunately it’s hello to the final UR-110 model: the “Eastwood”!
SalonQP isn’t simply a watch exhibition: it’s a watch exhibition inside an art gallery (the Saatchi Gallery), a setting that both the defines and enriches the brands and watches on display. And Hermès, very cleverly and very creatively, especially attracted visitors’ attention at SalonQP.
SalonQP, London’s premier watch exhibition, ran from the 6th through the 8th of November 2014 at the prestigious Saatchi Art Gallery in central London. It was bigger and better than ever in terms of both size and visitor numbers.
Read on for more than just a few reasons (and lots of photos) why SalonQP is my favorite watch exhibition.
I am a big fan of MB&F’s crazy Horological Machines and think that they make world of watchmaking much, much richer. Despite that, I have had a hard time imagining one on my own average-sized, conservative wrist. Whereas previous Horological Machines have been high-tech, miniaturized machines, the curved case and eye-like domes make HM6 feel organic and corporeal. . . a nice, friendly and (despite the titanium case) soft animal begging to be touched.
Now we get to the real nitty-gritty at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.: the Aiguille d’Or. There are no ifs, and or buts any more, just a decision on which of the 72 pre-selected watches is the best overall timepiece of the year. It is the most prestigious of the awards given.
Which could be our panel’s favorite to win? The Margot by Christophe Claret? Urwerk EMC? Perhaps the De Bethune DB29 Maxichrono Tourbillon? Or will it be something else entirely?