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.
In this edition of “Behind the Lens,” we take a look at a watch that you may not have heard about yet: the Inversion Principle by Fonderie 47. There’s a story to be told about both the brand and this particular watch. We explore both, although we primarily emphasize the design elements of the watch and their links to the brand, as well as some of my observations on what it was like to photograph this watch.
From the word “go,” the SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie) was an entirely different beast than what I was expecting, especially after having attended Baselworld as both a spectator and a journalist. From my experiences at Baselworld I expected the SIHH to be just another trade show, perhaps with a dash more glamour. But I was wrong . . . and for all the wrong reasons.
Almost as whimsical as the Hermès Arceau Le Temps Suspendu (“Suspended Time”), which won the prize for best men’s watch at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève in 2011, the Dressage L’Heure Masquée “veils” time instead of hiding it like Le Temps Suspendu. An interesting GMT module plays temporal hide-and-seek as the wearer dictates by pushing the button integrated into the crown.