Elizabeth takes a look at five of Van Cleef & Arpels’s artful SIHH 2018 introductions from the Le Jardin (“Garden”) collection and compares them to their namesake blooms.
Here Gary, Elizabeth, and Ian compare and discuss six areas of the Kari Voutilainen Masterpiece 8 and A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Minute Repeater, two rare and very technical timepieces. And there’s a video so you can see and hear both decimal repeaters to make your own comparison.
Martin Green has a confession: he has never understood why somebody would buy a watch from an esteemed brand and then have it “customized.” However, when it comes to companies customizing watches, the Bamford Watch Department is in a league of its own. How and why did LVMH join forces with it? And how does Martin feel about this team-up?
La Montre Hermès belongs to the elite circle of watch manufacturers offering a profoundly poetic expression of timekeeping through its métiers d’art watches. One recent example is the Slim d’Hermès Marche du Zambèze, a vibrant and colorful celebration of African wildlife en miniature.
Photos from the set of the upcoming film ‘First Man’ show Ryan Gosling, playing astronaut Neil Armstrong, wearing an Omega Speedmaster on a mesh bracelet. The familiar black bezel and tri-compax chronograph layout are very visible. It also appears he is wearing an as-yet unidentified Omega dress watch in the film as well.
Many of you are likely to be asking yourselves, “Who is Gerd-Rüdiger Lang?” Understandable. If we told you he founded Chronoswiss in 1983, you might then say, “Ah, yes.” But did you know that Lang, who sold Chronoswiss in 2012, owns a collection of chronographs that might well be the most complete themed collection of this type in the world? Elizabeth takes us through just a few of the treasures in Lang’s collection.
Joshua pontificates upon the unadorned cleanliness emphasized by the new Greubel Forsey Tourbillon 24 Secondes Vision Enamel. The chapter ring and center inset are gone, and for good reason: enamel. This entire fresh dial is made of oven-fired enamel, with thinner numerals and markers harking back to classic pocket watches or vintage wristwatches, and a cutaway to admire the perfect finish of the 24-second tourbillon.
Wouldn’t it be splendid to have everything your heart desired? Well, it’s a nice fantasy but it’s not going to happen to any of us, including GaryG. And, beside, he is not so sure that the experience of “selling to buy” isn’t actually a significant part, albeit a bittersweet one, of the collecting experience.
From the time GaryG revealed that he’d added a Patek Philippe Reference 5170P chronograph to his collection, he has frequently been asked two questions: how does it compare to his Patek Philippe Reference 5370P split-seconds chronograph? And how does it compare to Patek Philippe’s prior flagship chronograph, the platinum-encased Reference 5070P?
The retrograde indication is one of Joshua Munchow’s favorite “Because We Can” (BWC) complications: gears are an amazing invention and have allowed watchmakers to make incredible creations, leaving a multitude of openings for creativity. Joshua looks at some great retrogrades here and explains why he likes this display.