Many watches hold a special significance for their owners. The watch I am chronicling here didn’t just change someone’s life, it changed MY life: the Jean Daniel Nicolas Two-Minute Tourbillon by Daniel Roth.
I know of only three watchmakers making watches by hand today: one is Michel Boulanger for Naissance d’une Montre. The other two are Dominique Buser and Cyrano Devanthey, who are hand-making watches they call l’Instant de Vérité under the umbrella of their own micro brand Oscillon. And what a watch this is!
The latest watch from the British micro-brand Garrick debuted at SalonQP 2016 to a healthy dose of excitement. Not only because the people who love what Garrick does were excited to see something new, but because Garrick had teamed up with Andreas Strehler, a technical industry star, to produce a new manufacture-esque movement.
Giles Ellis, the man behind Schofield Watches, is first and foremost a man of details. An industrial designer by training, his passion is paying attention to the minutia that combine to create an object. The result is very often an honestly cool creation, and chief among these is the Blacklamp timepiece. This watch breaks conventions, not only for Schofield, but for watchmakers developing a product that is completely and utterly reasoned. Read on to find out why!
I hope you’ll find this commentary on a collector’s mindset and the motivations, delights, and possible misgivings behind why I bought a Vianney Halter Deep Space Tourbillon interesting and helpful.
George Daniels is a polarizing and fascinating figure. Several years ago, Michael Clerizo took it upon himself to spend the amount of time with Daniels needed in order to write a detailed book about his life, and the outcome is a pure joy to read with well thought-out words, logical organization, and gorgeous photos. I heartily recommend this tome to anyone interested in horology, and as a holiday gift as well!
In 1974 Dutch watchmaker Christiaan van der Klaauw founded his own workshop making astronomical clocks, then soon similar complications for wristwatches. He retired in 2009, passing his baton along to Daniel Reintjes, who is now in charge of the world’s only watch brand completely dedicated to astronomical watches. Quill & Pad’s Martin Green sat down with Reintjes to get a feel for where the brand is now.
The Andreas Strehler Sauterelle à Lune Perpétuelle contains a moon phase mechanism that will only need adjustment by one full day every 14,189.538 years. And not only does the Lune Perpétuelle have an extremely accurate moon phase, but with the help of the constant force mechanism it is even more accurate for the little intervals as well.
Creative freedom is what almost all designers yearn for. Which is why Octavio Garcia and Lukas Gopp, both previously of Audemars Piguet, have joined independent forces to create a new micro brand: Gorilla. Here is the first watch born of that union, one that is aimed at the WIS in all of us, but remains affordable.
Social media has experienced quite the discussion of a Chinese phone “by Kari Voutilainen,” a Swiss-based Finnish independent watchmaker, which turned out to be not a phone but a SIM card cover. If not a social media storm in a teacup, then a brisk zephyr in a thimble, which also involved another Finnish independent watchmaker, Stepan Sarpaneva.