With the horological storm that is Baselworld slowing calming down, we thought this might be a quiet news week; however, it turned out to be busy with news from Rolex, Richard Mille, Audemars Piguet, Zenith, Montblanc, Antiquorum, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Hublot, Digital Luxury Group and F.P. Journe.
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” I’m not referring to a gold mine on earth but the original source of the gold even before it arrived on our planet. Spoiler alert: it involves an explosion, a very big explosion!
While the two most well known German brands are A. Lange & Söhne and Glashütte Original, there are quite a few smaller German brands deserving our attention. Some with names you may have heard of, a few you may not have: Nomos, Lange & Heyne, Tutima, Kudoke and Leinfelder among them.
Welcome to the inaugural Quill & Pad Baselworld “awards,” in which we highlight a few of the watches and goings-on that caught our eyes at the world’s largest watch exhibition. Here’s what caught our eyes at Baselworld 2014 in no particular order.
While static images are great for appreciating details, they are less effective at conveying the scale and sense of place of large exhibitions such as Baselworld. So to add another perspective to Baselworld 2014, we are please to share these interactive 360° views of Baselworld 2014.
And as much as I appreciate high-end complications, bright colors catch my eye just as much as the next person and here is a small selection of colorful timepieces from Baselworld 2014.
It is impossible to describe or exaggerate the sheer scale of Baselworld. Most of the halls are not only enormous, but contain even more brands, stands and booths you might think possible. There’s always something else around the corner, up the stairs or behind the door.
Elizabeth Doerr and I had the honour of being interviewed by The Watches TV founder, Marc-André Deschoux recently about our motivations for launching Quill & Pad.
Location. Location. Location. I work from a comfortable, but fairly non-descript office situated between Geneva and Lausanne. The region is visually stunning with the lake and Alps to the east and Jura mountains to the west, but one of the major things making the location so special to me is that I am only five minutes’ drive from the Speake-Marin atelier.
For those of you not aware of who, or what, Roland Iten is then the two words − though not the only two − you need to know are “belt buckles.” High-end belt buckles. Belt buckles crafted like a high-end watch. Belt buckles crafted like a very high-end watch. Crafted so well that both Sylvester Stallone and I are big fans.