We keep making the moon phase complication because we love to look at the moon. One timepiece that keeps that romance alive, not to mention beauty, is the Jaquet Droz Perpetual Calendar Éclipse. This watch captured my heart when I first saw it, and it continues to hold sway over me.
The high-frequency 6 Hz Audemars Piguet Escapement burst onto the block in more ways than one. First off, and probably most significantly, it is of the direct impulse variety. This latter element was only made possible thanks to improved precision now available in manufacturing combined with a two-hundred-year-old design inspired by Robert Robin’s escapement of 1791.
We now know that the Histoire de Tourbillon 5 isn’t a hypothetical creature lost to time and remembered in lore. But what makes it so amazing beside the fact that it may very well be the last of the Histoire de Tourbillon series? All in all, I think it may be the culmination of the Histoire series, and if it is to be the last, then it is good that it is by far the best.
The jump hour has a long history, but first things first, it can’t technically be called a complication since the accepted definition of complication is a mechanism that provides information other than the time. However, anyone who gives a hoot will say in the same breath that there are many complications that don’t fit that definition. And I couldn’t agree more.
The HYT H1 and H2 have changed the landscape of what many thought possible in mechanical watches, and they may have even inspired other talented watchmakers to think outside the box in mixing unusual things with the old-school mechanics inside their timepieces. A lot of this is due to the incredible quality with which it was done, and the other is the sheer engineering that went into the concept.
The Tradition Fusée Tourbillon is the most incredible modern Breguet that I have ever seen. I make no claims as to its innovation, its complexity, or its everyday wearability. I simply make the claim that if you wanted a true Breguet timepiece with all of the brand’s history rolled into one, the 7047 would be the one.
Man’s journey through life has been millennia in the making, and it all started on those two little appendages at the bottom of our legs called feet. Now, thanks to some very passionate people over at Romain Jerome and the inspiration from the newest form of transportation – the spaceship – we have the appropriately called Spacecraft.
Independent watchmaker Frédéric Jouvenot’s Solar Deity collection highlights the creativity of the jump hour function even as it surprises the viewer with the complete readability of such an atypical dial: radial jump hour arms secured to a dodecagon-shaped piece in the center that houses the rotation pivots and the jump mechanism rotate once an hour, while a central half disc tracks the minutes as they pass. The effect is astounding!
Joshua Munchow had the good fortune to accompany Blancpain to the final race of the 2014 Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo USA racing series at Road Atlanta. Follow him on his heart-pounding ride through the Super Trofeo Village, the Lamborghini race paddock and – naturally – on a hot lap around the track in a 2014 Aventador with one of the drivers as he test-drove L-Evolution-R Chronograph Flyback Rattrapante Grande Date in carbon fiber and red gold.
Patek Philippe’s 5304R comes across as a good-looking watch with a casual, complicated skeletonized dial from the front. There is nothing ostentatious about it, nothing that screams for attention. Instead there it sits on your wrist, like a gentleman in a top hat, politely saying good evening to any who should glance its way.