Chopard co-president Karl-Friedrich Scheufele loves Porsche. “We are one of the rare watch brands with a genuine connection to cars,” Scheufele sums up the ultra-successful weekend of the 24 Hours of Le Mans during which Chopard’s partner Porsche added to its mythos by winning the race a seventeenth time. “Not every brand can say that.”
Every year since 2008, Longines has staged an exhibition match during Roland Garros featuring current and former professional tennis greats to play with the finalists of the Future Aces tournament. This year, the thirteen-year-old finalists, Xiaofei Wang and Jack Pinnington-Jones, had the pleasure of playing with French Davis Cup captain Arnaud Clément and 2007 Wimbledon doubles champion Michaël Llodra in an entertaining matchup of fake grunts and tricky hot dog shots.
The quintessential sports tourbillon, the Richard Mille RM 027 RN, officially debuted at the 2010 French Open on the wrist of that year’s champion, Rafael Nadal. It was specifically created to stand up to the punishment of the tennis court. Now Richard Mille introduces the RM 27-02, which is even more high-tech, mechanically resistant, and expensive than the first edition. Read on to find out why.
With the advent of the R60 Diablo mechanical belt buckle, Roland Iten now assures the world that you no longer have to be a princess to wear an incredible jewel in an everyday setting. Or even a prince. The highlight of the red gold and titanium chassis of the R60 Diablo mechanical belt buckle is a fairly well camouflaged fancy cognac diamond weighing in at 60.66 carats.
David Oscarson has been creating luxury fountain pens since 2000 and has won three Robb Report’s annual Best of the Best award – each one a personal tribute to the art of writing. “The biggest challenge today is helping people remember what a signature means: that it is an extension of one’s self,” says Oscarson. The use of hand-rendered guilloche and enamel, traditional art forms also seen in watchmaking, are emblematic of the brand, and Oscarson takes great care in keeping their quality pure. This also true of the new Alexander Fleming collection.
On a recent visit to the Valbray manufacture, I surreptitiously looked at the electrics in back of a CNC machine (as one does). Seeing my interest, Côme de Valbray, who co-founded the brand with his wife Olga, casually mentioned that the racks of electronics contained the processing power of 350 powerful computers and that the machine drew up to 90,000 watts of power in operation: that’s equivalent to the power used by around ten homes.
Auction house Sotheby’s will stage an auction in New York on June 11, 2015 featuring items from a private collection of musical automata within its sale of important watches. The auction pieces, mainly made for export to royalty throughout Europe, Turkey, India, and China, are headed up by a singing bird scent flask made by Pierre Jaquet-Droz in 1785.
One pen that really caught my eye at the 2015 edition of Baselworld was the Montegrappa Cult Q1, which offers a first in the world of fine writing instruments. The Q1 can be loaded with four different ink colors that may be exchanged mid-sentence.
While we see Polaris as the North Star for now, our descendents 20 generations down the road from now will not. This is due to an astronomical process called precession. There is something that mimics precession that you can wear on your wrist and pass on to those descendents: the Jaeger-LeCoultre Duomètre Sphérotourbillon Moon, the most recent addition to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s already stacked Duomètre collection.
For those of you who are regular readers of my “Behind the Lens” series, it’s no secret that my watch pals and I are big fans of independent watchmaking.
Here at Quill & Pad we’re also fans of the independents, prominently including Irish watchmaking brothers John and Stephen McGonigle.
Recently, I had the opportunity to photograph an example of the Tuscar One in Ten owned by a good friend. Let’s take a look at some of the results.