While we see Polaris as the North Star for now, our descendents 20 generations down the road from now will not. This is due to an astronomical process called precession. There is something that mimics precession that you can wear on your wrist and pass on to those descendents: the Jaeger-LeCoultre Duomètre Sphérotourbillon Moon, the most recent addition to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s already stacked Duomètre collection.
Michael Kobold and explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes created the Kathmandu Fire Truck Expedition, which will see a group of adventurers drive several fire engines from Kolkata (Calcutta) to Kathmandu. But before they could set out on this harrowing expedition planned for December 2015, Kathmandu was devastated by an unimaginable earthquake on April 25, 2015. Find out about the Fire Truck Expedition and how you can help Kobold and his admirable team help Kathmandu.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Michael Kobold first went to Kathmandu together in 2008, the latter having spontaneously decided to accompany his ambassador on a Mount Everest summit bid. They did not make it to the summit, but Kobold came back in 2009 and 2010 to successfully complete his bids despite life-endangering complications, becoming the first German national to summit Everest twice along the way. What then transpired is innovative and thankful.
For those of you who are regular readers of my “Behind the Lens” series, it’s no secret that my watch pals and I are big fans of independent watchmaking.
Here at Quill & Pad we’re also fans of the independents, prominently including Irish watchmaking brothers John and Stephen McGonigle.
Recently, I had the opportunity to photograph an example of the Tuscar One in Ten owned by a good friend. Let’s take a look at some of the results.
“This is a kind of homage for me,” Romain Gauthier explained as he showed me his superbly finished HMS Ten at Baselworld 2015. Gauthier celebrates a milestone with the appropriately named wristwatch: ten years of his company’s existence as a boutique watch brand. While this watch appears solidly classic in style at first glance, don’t be fooled by that. It contains a number of elements that are bound to make it an interesting evergreen in the years to come: compelling movement design, intriguing dial design, and great crown placement.
In honor of ten years of the Big Bang, Hublot brought five bona fide rock stars to Baselworld 2015 to play a small concert for its clients to celebrate this grand achievement, thereby forming an extraordinary ‘80s supergroup: singer Sebastian Bach (Skid Row), guitarist Tommy Thayer (Kiss), bass player Jack Blades (Night Ranger and Damn Yankees), keyboard player Teddy “Zig Zag” Andreadis, who has toured with Guns N’ Roses, and watch aficionado and drummer from Kiss, Eric Singer.
The long-awaited recent release of the ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ trailer delights me to no end (it is also nice to see that Ben Affleck might actually turn out be a decent Batman; the few seconds of him in the trailer were shockingly good in my opinion). Without further ado, I’d like to call to memory a few timepieces that have commemorated Batman in recent history by Jaeger-LeCoultre, Romain Jerome, and Montegrappa.
Adventure and exploration happen every day and everywhere; there just happen to be explorers who make a little more noise about their exploits. And for that reason we know some of them by name – like Christopher Columbus.
Released this year, the Zenith Academy Christophe Colomb Hurricane Grand Voyage II outfitted with a gimbaled zero-gravity escapement and chain and fusée continues that path in a grand manner.
An automatic watch’s oscillating weight, or rotor, is what winds it up. It does so using the motion of one’s wrist. In many automatic watches, the rotor’s activity is clearly visible via a see-through case back. But in the Dior VIII Grand Bal, this essentially functional component is transformed into a gorgeously decorated focal point of the dial.
MB&F’s Legacy Machines are the avant-garde brand’s take on traditional complications. With the limited-edition LM101 Frost, MB&F has added a new string to the brand’s traditional bow, which until now had been strung with reinterpretations of traditional complications and mechanisms: finish.