I have attended the odd auction. I have even gone to auctions with the intent to bid on a watch. But that hadn’t yet worked out for me. Not until I saw that Parisian auction house Artcurial was auctioning off what was left of Alain Silberstein’s inventory and put in an absentee bid on a long shot. I had little hope.
Burrells in Tunbridge Wells, Kent (UK) recently showcased the new Tudor releases from Baselworld 2015. However, a particularly pleasurable element of the event was the invited speaker: none other than Sir Ranulph Fiennes, a man the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ has called “the greatest living explorer.” Fiennes spoke articulately, humorously, and humbly for an hour, both wowing and at times shocking the one hundred plus invited guests gathered at Burrells, to hear him tell, almost playfully, his stories about life at the extreme limits.
Two sets of Jaquet Droz Petite Heure Minute models comprising eight watches each depict a beautiful butterfly as it flutters from flower to flower, starting on the left side of the spacious enamel dial and ending on the right side. The roomy enamel dials seem like the blank pages of a book, ready to be imprinted by this story of nature dreamt up by painters and engravers hard at work within the artisans’ workshop at the Jaquet Droz factory.
Ulysse Nardin’s Stranger burst onto the scene in 2013, the first wristwatch with a visible music box mechanism. It plays 16 seconds of Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.” The latest is a Stranger for the 2015 Only Watch auction, which is a one-of-one unique example that plays “We are the Champions” by Queen.
Over its eleven years of existence, Hautlence has experienced the tumult of both changes in investors and senior management. Hautlence co-founder and CEO Guillaume Tetu has been through it all. And he’s still smiling!
Vortex is the brand’s latest, and most complicated, watch post-MELB acquisition, and it’s success, or lack thereof, will be an important milestone for Hautlence as it looks to the future. So how is the watch?
Harrods has opened its doors and indeed windows to Richard Mille for the month of July.
The pop-up store within the Brompton Road Exhibition Window celebrates “icons” by Richard Mille, including rare collection wristwatches and recent releases, including the stunning RM 19-02 Tourbillon Fleur lavished in diamonds.
Visitors to the store and passersby alike have the chance to view some amazing watches through the decorated windows as if they were works of art.
“What, another watch?” she almost screamed in disbelief no sooner than I had opened the front door to our little love nest. Rewind to last week. I had been looking for a Roger Smith Series 1 for some time now, and Jones, my watch dealer, happened to finally locate one. I thought that I had played it pretty safe, so I really don’t know how she could have noticed. But then what happened next changed the rest of my life.
Fiona Krüger is a young Scottish artist and designer. She utilizes her love of art to make fantastic timepieces inspired by both the seventeenth-century skull watch of Mary, Queen of Scots and the Mexican celebration of Dia de Los Muertos. She has further developed her initial skull designs to now include the brightly colored Celebration Skull, which she launched to coincide with Baselworld 2015. This is limited to just 24 pieces.
As the resident pen writer at this publication, and since ‘plume’ is the French word for both quill and pen, I thought I’d share my thoughts about Breguet’s Rêve de Plume. This haute joaillerie timepiece is part of the Breguet Plumes collection, and it is a tribute to Queen Marie Antoinette.
In my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d be writing about two different cushion-shaped chronographs made especially for women. This is a particularly enjoyable exercise for me as the two chronographs I examine here are by two of the most traditional watch manufactures at work today: Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe. So, how do they differ?