During a recent visit to Jaeger-LeCoultre, product director Stéphane Belmont revealed that watches containing moon phases are always among the brand’s bestselling timepieces. So how, aside from the obvious moon phase display at 6 o’clock, does the new Master Calendar Meteorite fit into Jaeger-LeCoultre’s “year of astronomy” in 2015? Belmont replied, “Wearing meteorite is like having a piece of eternity on the wrist.”
A ring watch is a very rare sight in horology. This delicate style of timepiece is dependent upon a masterful set of artisans as, to accommodate the dainty size needed to fit on a finger, the mechanics must be much smaller. While ring watches might be rare, they’re not unheard of. Here we show you five – well, six – quite different ring watches, one modern from Baselworld 2015 while five are historical pieces.
Talking to Eric Singer about watches is like cramming four months’ worth of casual shop talk into one hour: Singer is really, really into watches. One of rock’s hardest working drummers, he has played with acts like Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, Lita Ford, and Gary Moore as well as Kiss. In addition to a love of music, Singer inherited a love of timepieces from his father; his extensive collection illustrates his passion for the subject.
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.
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.
This month’s horological news includes new releases from: Ulysse Nardin (Hannibal Minute Repeater); Jaquet Droz (Grande Seconde Deadbeat plus Sunstone); Romain Gauthier (HMS Ten); Jaeger-LeCoultre (Master Compressor Extreme LAB 2); Omega (Seamaster Aqua Terra 150M); Girard-Perregaux (1966); Blancpain (Villeret Big Date plus Fifty Fathoms Ocean Commitment Bathyscaphe Flyback Chronograph); Arnold & Son (Dial Side True Beat DSTB Steel); Graham (Geo.Graham Tourbillon); Linde Werdelin (Oktopus Carbon Green); and Carl F. Bucherer (ScubaTec in red gold).
The moon and its astronomical implications was the overriding theme for Jaeger-LeCoultre at the 2015 edition of the SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie) in Geneva. And there was no better way to illustrate this than to introduce new variations on some of the Le Sentier-based brand’s most complicated, astronomically-themed timepieces.
There were new models launched in Hong Kong at the second edition of Watches & Wonders from Jaeger-LeCoultre, Richard Mille, Vacheron Constantin, A. Lange & Söhne, Montblanc, Audemars Piguet, IWC, Roger Dubuis, and Panerai.
I had the privilege of reporting on the wonderful project launched by photographer Howard Parr and supported by Jaeger-LeCoultre to advance the fight against the “silent killer” of women, ovarian cancer. Howard is also an avid Jaeger-LeCoultre collector. Jaeger-LeCoultre sponsored two Southern California receptions centered on Howard’s stirring photos of ovarian cancer survivors and benefitting the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance (OCNA).
During Quill & Pad’s on location visit to Jaeger-LeCoultre in Le Sentier, Ian and I had the unique chance to take a lesson in enameling from the brand’s self-taught master Miklos Merczel. Merczel’s story is an interesting one, and jibes with Jaeger-LeCoultre’s common history with this art form: historically and uniquely on request, Jaeger-LeCoultre has famously placed enameled miniature paintings on the flip side of the Reverso case.