The original EMC was designed from the outset to be a platform for validating Urwerk’s mechanical/electronic hybrid concept; to be a technical instrument rather than a full-fledged conventional wristwatch.
But EMC2 now looks like a wristwatch. I still wouldn’t call it pretty, not while sober anyway, but “good looking in a macho way” isn’t so much of a stretch.
It’s SIHH 2016 week! And already, our California collector group was off to a splendid start with our traditional Saturday evening dinner with friend and genius watchmaker Kari Voutilainen. Kari brought along several of the watches that he will be presenting this week at SIHH, and was kind enough to grant permission for us to show them here before the official start of the show.
As the SIHH closes its doors, the Hautlence team will no longer include co-founder Guillaume Tetu. At the end of 2015, Tetu announced that he would be leaving his own company to “take up a new challenge.” So what happens to Hautlence now? Read on to find out.
If you’ve never been to visit François-Paul Journe’s atelier in the heart of Geneva, now would be a very good time to visit it. Aside from the astounding watches you will likely encounter on display, there are a great number of other interesting objects a fan of good watchmaking shouldn’t miss. Including the nearly one thousand books, historical manuscripts, letters, and catalogs once belonging to the extensive horological library of departed historical expert Jean-Claude Sabrier.
Recently, GaryG presented his take on the Kari Voutilainen Masterpiece 8 while Elizabeth wrote about the A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Minute Repeater.
Here Gary, Elizabeth, and Ian compare and discuss six areas of these two rare and very technical timepieces: design, innovation, operation, finishing, sound, and overall impression.
And there’s a video so you can see and hear both decimal repeaters to make your own comparison.
If you’ve ever been to Mexico, you know that vivid colors are the order of the day, particularly when it comes to local art forms. La Montre Hermès envisioned the dial of the svelte Slim d’Hermès Mille Fleurs du Mexique wristwatch as a painting framed by a circle of white gold instead of a square wooden frame. The Mexican tapestry motif taken from an original Hermès scarf is painstakingly applied by hand to create a miniature painting on a fragile mother-of-pearl dial.
Using the Zeitwerk as the model to house A. Lange & Söhne’s first repeating wristwatch, the appropriately named Zeitwerk Minute Repeater, which just happens to be a decimal repeater, is nothing short of genius. This repeating wristwatch is not intended to be a traditional classic. But it is intended to rock the collector’s world with its fireworks of technical prowess and perfect finishing. We analyze this nearly $470,000 masterpiece according to six main criteria: design, innovation, operation, finishing, sound, and overall impression.
One of the big introductions of 2015 in the collector’s world was A. Lange & Söhne’s Zeitwerk Minute Repeater: a watch that both shows and chimes off the time using a “decimal” format of hours, tens of minutes, and minutes rather than the more traditional hours, quarters (15 minutes), and minutes. But the first decimal repeating wristwatch to reach the market wasn’t the Zeitwerk Minute Repeater. It was by independent watchmaker Kari Voutilainen.
It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read my pieces in the past that I like a good jump hour mechanism. Actually, I love a good jump hour mechanism. There is just something about that instantaneous change driven entirely by mechanical means that fascinates me. And yet not all “digital” watches require the use of jump hours and minutes; some don’t even use a jump at all yet still read digitally. So today I want to break down a list of my seven (plus change) favorite “digital” watches.
In this age of digital information, watch companies try to get ahead of the competition by releasing news on their new timepieces ahead of the big watch fairs. The 2016 edition is no different, and in honor of the upcoming 26th edition of the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH), we present you with an overview of some of the new models that have already been revealed, including timepieces by Jaeger-LeCoultre, Richard Mille, Piaget, Montblanc, MB&F, H. Moser & Cie, HYT, and Roger Dubuis.