From the word “go,” the SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie) was an entirely different beast than what I was expecting, especially after having attended Baselworld as both a spectator and a journalist. From my experiences at Baselworld I expected the SIHH to be just another trade show, perhaps with a dash more glamour. But I was wrong . . . and for all the wrong reasons.
The art of skeletonizing a watch is definitely a rare skill, but so is creating a skeleton movement from the ground up to conceive only the essential right from the start: in essence, the most nothingness possible.
For the art of skeletonization, emptiness is the holy grail that is emphatically sought.
One great example was released at SIHH 2015: the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Automatic Skeleton. Like the majority of the Excalibur Skeleton pieces, it’s a skeleton movement instead of a skeleton-ized movement.
Brothers John and Stephen McGonigle from Athlone, Ireland are fine examples of the independent spirit, and this is evident in their unique Tuscar timepiece, which features a highly distinctive in-house movement with subtle details reflecting their Irish heritage.
Released in 2010, the RGM Pennsylvania Tourbillon made a pretty big splash among those who have educated themselves about such things. It is, after all, the only serially produced tourbillon made in America and is simply an increditastic watch from any perspective. Design, function, and finishing: it is at the head of its class.
You may be familiar with the old Christmas diddy “The Twelve Days Of Christmas.” Let me sing you the final verse of this song, including what my true love gave to me on the twelfth and final day, in horological terms…
A gear is a toothed wheel that meshes with a similar toothed wheel or rack to create rotational movement. Ever since the first Maurice Lacroix Roue Carrée with non-circular gears came out in 2010 I have lusted over the odd set of gears visible above the dial, so being able to finally have some time with an example was very cool for me.
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.