Pierce Brosnan’s personal and professional timepieces have included big names like Rolex, Cartier, Omega, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and Panerai, but also intriguingly Speake-Marin. What influence do the roles he plays have on his personal watch taste? Martin Green provides the answer.
Skulls are much more than a depiction of the bones that hold the human face in shape and our brains in place. Used in many types of art, they are deeply symbolic, often representing themes of mortality. Take a quick symbolic journey with us back to Baselworld 2016 and discover skull-infused functional objects by Speake-Marin, Hublot, HYT, Hautlence, and Edelberg.
Peter Speake-Marin’s eponymous brand’s creation, the Dong Son Tourbillon, finds its inspiration in an ancient style of bronze drums found in the Red River Delta region of Vietnam. This gorgeous tourbillon with its finely etched dial interspersed with blue lacquer is an amazingly beautiful unique piece addition to it. And, naturally, Speake-Marin drew from the most notable examples of Đông Sơn drums for the layout of this extraordinary dial.
If you know Peter Speake-Marin, then you know why he is so popular with collectors: as a creator, he goes the extra mile to conceive something absolutely stunning and unique. He has also made one of the most breathtaking timepieces I had the pleasure to see at Baselworld 2015: the spectacular Kennin-ji Temple Masters Project, which was realized with the help of two engravers and a leather maker.
Here I get the chance to talk about something that our readers probably know I love all too well: a jump hour watch. But not just any jump hour watch, this time it’s the four-handed Speake-Marin Jumping Hours, a piece unique. I was extremely excited, not to mention anxious, to get my hands on this piece, but the wait was worth it.
In 2015, the AHCI celebrates thirty years of existence. This is a genuine milestone for any organization, and is really a grand, grand accomplishment for a loose grouping of more than 30 artisans of varying nationality, background, and level of accomplishment. Here we present five beautiful watches by AHCI members we saw at Baselworld.
Paradoxically, the SIHH really begins at least a day before its doors open; Sunday is the time to visit the smaller brands holding private exhibitions Geneva. So we put on our Sunday best and headed into town for a busy day of meetings with De Bethune, Urwerk, Laurent Ferrier, Revelation, Christophe Claret, Speake-Marin.
The natural descendent of the Speake-Marin Shimoda model, the Velsheda is a one-handed watch. It tells the time to the nearest five minutes, but if you are wearing it, you may not even care. This watch uncouples you from the speedy second hand sweeping around the dial and even the noticeable crawl of the minute hand.
While Baselworld 2014 was not a particularly big year for tourbillons, they were still an important element in the collections of most brands and a few of them were truly exceptional. Here are just a few of the tourbillons that passed in front of my lens at Baselworld 2014.
Location. Location. Location. I work from a comfortable, but fairly non-descript office situated between Geneva and Lausanne. The region is visually stunning with the lake and Alps to the east and Jura mountains to the west, but one of the major things making the location so special to me is that I am only five minutes’ drive from the Speake-Marin atelier.