The Opus 5 by Felix Baumgartner/Urwerk for Harry Winston is one of the best of this series of exceptional timepieces. But, as this drawing by Urwerk designer Martin Frei from June of 2003 shows, one of the original ideas behind Urwerk’s Opus 5 was a digital display in a model christened with the working title “Time Bandit.”
When writing ‘Bridging Art and Mechanics: The Unabridged Story of the Corum Golden Bridge,’ I discovered much more about Corum’s artistic co-founder, René Bannwart, including the fact that he was the creator of Omega’s flagship Constellation and Seamaster lines.
Romain Gauthier’s Logical One is a masterpiece of complicated mechanics, boasting − as with all of the models in his collection − a level of finishing rivaled only by the likes of Philippe Dufour, Greubel Forsey, and Kari Voutlainen. That’s high praise, indeed. With its four patents, Logical One delivers what it promises: a re-imagined complication laid out very logically. And the most recent edition of the timepiece taking home the 2013 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève prize for best men’s complication is a surprising all-black version.
Having the chance to wear the H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Perpetual Calendar for several weeks reminded me a great deal of the evening the brand launched in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. So in addition to reporting here on the watch itself, I’m going to also provide a few details of recent history regarding this lovely, classic perpetual calendar.
Calculating large numbers is a pain if all you have handy is your brain and a pencil. This is why people have created systems and objects to make the process easier. The Greubel Forsey Quantième Perpétuel à Équation has a mechanical computer that calculates the dates for the perpetual calendar and equation of time. This is a complete departure from the traditional perpetual calendar mechanism.
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?