Rolex is decidedly famous for its sports watches. Despite that, there are watch fans – and Rolex fans – who prefer a dressier style of timepiece on their wrists. And for them, Rolex has the Cellini line, the first of which was released in 1928.
I like digits. I really do. Especially on a watch because digits condense information into smaller and more meaningful packages that you might describe as “information dense.” This is why when I saw the new IWC Portugieser Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month 75th anniversary edition I was very happy.
“It’s not a pocket watch,” Felix Baumgartner, Urwerk’s co-founder and chief watchmaker, emphasized to me, “It’s a ‘Zeit Device’.” This ultra-complicated calendar-cum-pocket watch is one of the most unique timepieces in the horological world today. Enjoy its starring role in this new ‘Easy Rider’-style video.
February 18 was an eventful day, both in 1815 when Ferdinand Adolph Lange first saw the light of day in Dresden, Germany, and in 2015 when A. Lange & Söhne celebrated the landmark date with a limited edition platinum 1815 model with black dial.
Here we present four quite different styles commemorating the 2015 Chinese Year of the Goat with beautifully decorated dials by Jaquet Droz, Ulysse Nardin, Vacheron Constantin, and Arnold & Son. Shhhh…if you listen carefully you might even hear them bleat!
For the past five years, I’ve had the delightful experience of traveling to Switzerland with several friends to experience SIHH week, before finishing up with a Friday night dinner at which we review our impressions of the week by answering what watch we thought was best of show at SIHH; what was the worst watch; what current-production watch that we saw at any event during the week would we buy if money were no object; and what current-production watch did we see that we would buy with our own money?
At SIHH 2015 Panerai released the Radiomir Firenze, with the same case dimensions as the first watch created back in 1936, with a lovely little addition: complete case engraving in the bulino style, a traditional engraving technique combined with motifs that simply sing old-world charm.
Piaget has a fairly impressive haute joaillerie collection. Two of the jewelry pieces caught my eye recently, and I thought I’d share them here in case anyone is still looking for that special something for Valentine’s Day. Yes, it may well be too late to pick up one of these scintillating baubles in time, but between you and me, I really don’t think that she will mind waiting.
The sixty-fifth edition of the Berlinale, Berlin’s Film Festival, captured the movie world’s attention for a week in February 2015. One of the biggest public festivals in the world (meaning anyone can buy tickets to attend the premiers), every year the Berlinale welcomes scores of Hollywood personas celebrating new movies. How did Glashütte Original get involved aside from name recognition?
I have always been a big fan of the Corum Golden Bridge thanks to its mechanical beauty, austere minimalism, and trademark transparency, which paradoxically almost seems mysterious, even though it doesn’t hide a thing. The Golden Bridge has gone through very few changes since its introduction in 1980. Until a dragon was added.