Latest watch news · Page 171

Welcome to another instalment of Back To Basics, our series aimed at newcomers to our lovely shared passion. This installment does not cover one specific theme. The aim is rather to provide novice watch enthusiasts with some broadly applicable tips and mindset advice. Where do you start? How do you start? What mistakes can we […] Visit Back To Basics: Expert Advice For Novice Watch Enthusiasts to read the full article.

Fine watches have pulled double duty as decorative objects since before the invention of the hairspring in 1675. In this sense, one could almost argue that watches have been linked to art since before they were even watches in the modern sense. This relationship emerged early in part because both types of objects were made primarily for the same clientele: wealthy elite in Europe and elsewhere. Though art and watches exist for different reasons, they are both often created with eternity in mind. The noble materials and timeless designs of many fine watches, especially those of the quality that would normally be paired with a work of art, also help justify the painstaking (and costly) work of artisanal decoration, which can, in some cases, take more than a year for a single work of miniature art. Introduction to miniature painting Of all the forms of decoration that have been applied to watches, miniature paintings are an especially important genre. Historically, these miniature masterpieces have been produced primarily in enamel, though acrylic paint is increasingly used today. Much has been written about the art of miniature painting, and it would not be an exaggeration to call it a dying art, since the number of living practitioners seems to have rarely exceeded half a dozen at any given time over the past century. Vacheron Constantin’s Masterpiece on Your Wrist programme is a partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that allows customers to commissi...

There’s a “don’t change it if it ain’t broke” mentality in Swiss watchmaking. Progress is slow, and it often seems that there’s a general distrust of change. An example of this is in the mechanical movements that power most of our watches. Chances are, you have at least one watch with an ETA 2824 or a movement based on the 2824 in your collection. If you’re like me, you have several. For Swiss-made watches of a certain price point, they are the standard. They are “workhorses” that, while not the most feature-rich, offer reliability and serviceability. And part of the reason for that is that the design has been around, largely unchanged, since the 1970s (the 2824-2, which is the current standard, was released in the 80s). That is, until 2013, when ETA launched 80-hour movements based on the 2824-2. First debuted in a Tissot as the Powermatic 80, ETA nearly doubled the 2824’s power reserve by slowing the escapement’s frequency from 28,800bph to 21,600bph, introducing synthetic components, and increasing the mainspring’s capacity. The biggest update to the 2824 format in a generation (though they no longer use that numbering), as ETA is part of Swatch, these movements gave the group’s catalog of brands under Omega an unexpected edge in the market, but were not available to third-party brands, thus limiting their overall impact. The ETA 2824 featured in a Sinn 556i In 2003, Sellita began supplying movements to third parties as a response to Swatch’s...

Far from being a recently-introduced collection, Tissot’s PR516 represents the brand’s racing-oriented option. First seen in 1956 with the PR letters originally denoting Particulièrement Robustes, the collection underwent a remarkable transformation in 1965 to become what we know today. As time progressed, the PR516 underwent various iterations, and came back in great shape in 2024 […]

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