The Phillips Hong Kong Watch Auction: FOUR particularly interested us due to the presence of a subset of 43 watches for sale called “43 Watches & Encounters: The Laurent Picciotto Collection of Contemporary Watches.” Please enjoy our commentary of the auction results for these timepieces.
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.
When I asked Alain Silberstein about his watches for MB&F, the French designer grinned beneath his ever-present mustache and replied, “This one is definitely more my style.” There are many more elements ensuring that this version of LM1 is one that will never be forgotten thanks to the extraordinary creative collaboration between Silberstein and MB&F founder Maximilian Büsser.
In the early 1990s, I was facing the same dilemma as today: should I buy modern or vintage? The problem was that the modern watches actually all looked vintage, right down to the sizes. There was something lacking, and watch shopping at times almost felt like perusing the yogurt section in a Soviet supermarket.
I’m obviously exaggerating here, but in general it seemed to me that creativity was more or less an afterthought.
Enter Vianney Halter in 1998 with the Antiqua Perpetual. And then what happened next: the birth of ICH (“independent creative horology”).
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.
