Tennis and timepieces are coming ever closer together thanks in great part to brands spending more and more money on ambassadors. But not only! Elizabeth Doerr shares thoughts on two new tennis-themed watches from Studio Underd0g and Maurice De Mauriac.
Despite having made more than 100 pièces uniques among a grand total of approximately 1,500 timepieces spanning 42 years of a truly inventive career, independent watchmaker and co-founder of the A.H.C.I. Svend Andersen has become particularly known for the worldtimer, a complicated timepiece displaying the time in 24 time zones. Here Elizabeth Doerr shares a brief history of worldtimers and blue gold while looking at the Andersen Genève x Asprey Heures du Monde.
One of the best things about dealing with independent watchmakers is the ability to request unique touches on your watch. That’s just what happened after GaryG’s new friend first saw Kari Voutilainen’s Sport28, a titanium-encased watch that itself is quite rare with only eight examples made in total.
When Tim and Bart Grönefeld showed Ian Skellern their prototype 1941 Grönograaf during Watches & Wonders 2022, he loved it. But he didn’t think it would win “Best Chronograph” 2022 at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève because he thought that prize would go to the then-soon-to-be-released MB&F LM Sequential EVO. Ian has since changed his mind, and here’s why.
Not one to shy away from wild watches and unique combinations, in late 2021 Urwerk debuted a special tenth-anniversary UR-110 to commemorate the launch of the original UR-110 in 2011: the UR-100 Bakelite.
A star is born! In the movie ‘Last Looks’ Mel Gibson asks, “Have you seen what [watch] this man wears? It costs more than the house I grew up in.” The reply: “It’s a Kudoke Skeleton; they only make 35 a year.”
For a relatively small manufacture like Armin Strom, scaling the production is not an easy thing, nor something that is always as desirable as it looks. However, creating watches that remain virtually unobtainable for most (potential) clients also isn’t. That is why Armin Strom is already releasing the second edition of the Orbit, which is also limited to 25 pieces.
When you talk with watch enthusiasts, the conversation often branches out to other areas of passion; one of these is inevitably sound systems. Martin Green doesn’t have firm statistics, but there are a considerable number of audiophiles among watch collectors. And like him, they will be probably be smitten with the Sonomaster Chronograph made by Reservoir.
Oskar Pascal is the brainchild of a pair of Swedish brothers who were neither previously involved in the watch industry nor are they watchmakers. The engineer and designer have created a cleanly designed chronograph housed within the world’s first watch case in ZR01, an amorphous alloy based on zirconium, one of the hardest metals in the world and even used by NASA. And then there are the Pods!
Here Elizabeth Doerr highlights three new watches of 2021 by independent watchmakers with eye-catching dials that really caught her own eye.