When you strip away complexity, there is nowhere to hide: everything has to be absolutely perfect because the viewer’s gaze has no distractions. Just as the smallest of scratches on the otherwise unblemished paintwork of a new car appear magnified to our eyes, the design and execution of a relatively simple watch have to be flawless.
It should surprise no one that the Greubel Forsey Balancier has achieved that.
The Jaquet Droz Loving Butterfly Automaton tells a story with its expressive dial and ultra-creative mechanics, a story that began 300 years ago with Pierre and Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz’s Draughtsman android, which was often programmed to draw a cherub seated in a chariot drawn by a butterfly.
Playfulness, unexpectedness, imagination, creativity, and, yes, perhaps even friendliness. When I look at the stunning Hermès L’Heure Impatiente, I see all of this, a timepiece placed squarely in the lovely Slim d’Hermès line and boasting an ingenious striking module by Jean-Marc Wiederrecht of Agenhor. Read on to find out what its unusual super power is!
I have never seen a California dial come out of Glashütte. But then so many things out of Glashütte are pleasantly surprising, interesting, and excellent quality. And if we’re talking about Nomos Glashütte, then usually at extremely fair prices, too. Check out the new Club Campus models with California dial and prices that must be seen to be believed.
In 2005 I visited Baselworld a portable 20x magnification stereo microscope. Over a few days of examining hundreds of watches, there were only two that stood out as having dials that were flawless under the microscope’s intense scrutiny: one was the wild Harry Winston Opus V by a young brand called Urwerk that had yet to celebrate its tenth birthday. This year Urwerk celebrates its twentieth anniversary and what a 20 years it has been!
Blast from the past! This post is a “reprint” of an article I wrote that was first published on The PuristS in 2005. This article is divided into four parts: Felix Baumgartner and Urwerk, Harry Winston Rare Timepieces and the Opus V, The Urwerk 103.03, and The Urwerk 103.03 user review.
To my longtime friends in the watch hobby, and perhaps to regular readers here as well, the mention of my name may conjure up a number of connotations: patron of the independents, fan of A. Lange & Söhne, admirer of Patek Philippe grand complications, and longtime customer of Jaeger-LeCoultre, among other characterizations more or less favorable.
But these likely never included vintage maven! So how did I get here?
When you walk into the Struthers’s Birmingham workshop, you feel like you could be stepping a century back into the history of horology. Until you spy a few of Rebecca Struthers’s tattoos, that is. And then you know you are in the here and now. Meet Craig and Rebecca Struthers: two modern watchmakers doing things the old-fashioned way. Sort of.
Here is something a little different that was sparked by disaster and created a legacy, especially in Russia, with regard to the design of clocks and watches in telegraph and radio rooms ever since.
Classic on the front, party in the back: that about sums up the traditional erotic timepiece. And one of the modern masters of the erotic watch is Blancpain. In this excellent video by The Watches TV, you will discover what “hot horologerie” is all about!