795 articles · 531 videos found · page 26 of 45
Monochrome
As you might know now, after our initial article, Breguet is celebrating its 250th anniversary, and we’ll be seeing a fleet of new models released throughout the year, all made of 18k Breguet gold and paying tribute to some of the most important inventions of its founder, Abraham-Louis Breguet. Initiated by the launch of the […]
Monochrome
This year, one of the most important names in the watch industry is celebrating its 250th anniversary. I’m of course talking about Breguet, the brand created by the all-important Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1775, Quai de l’Horloge in Paris (even though he was Swiss, A.L. Breguet worked most of his life in Paris except during the […]
Fratello
Abraham-Louis Breguet was probably the first watchmaker to launch a watch with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. Okay, well, not exactly, but in 1797, he made his 61mm Souscription pocket watch available for order with a 25% down payment. That way, the relatively simple watch with only one hand and a white enamel dial […] Visit Introducing: The Breguet Classique Souscription 2025 - Initiating The Brand’s 250th-Anniversary Celebrations to read the full article.
Teddy Baldassarre
The Cartier of today is undeniably a symbol of luxury and has strategically manufactured that imagery. From its quintessential deep red boxes with gold filigree border to its looping cursive script, even before you get to the object itself, whether it be jewelry or a watch, the brand has carefully crafted the entire experience of its product to position it as such. But today, we’re taking a look at an anomaly in the maison’s past, for which Cartier descended from its luxurious heights to extend its hand to the mass market. Les Must de Cartier is representative of a pivotal time in the history of watchmaking, and its contrasting accessibility played a crucial role in the maison’s longevity and its ability to weather shifting market trends. Down below, I’ll be walking you through how Must de Cartier came to be, some significant design codes, how the line has reemerged after its discontinuation, and share some musings and philosophical ponderings about this strange chapter in Cartier’s history. Les Must de Cartier Context From its relatively humble beginnings as a local, artisanal jewelry workshop in 1847, by the turn of the 20th century, Cartier had already established itself as a global luxury powerhouse, operating in London, New York, and Paris by 1909. Each independent branch of Cartier at this time was operated by a trio of Louis-François Cartier’s grandsons, and while they often collaborated, each location developed its own unique flair and catered to ...
Quill & Pad
Madame Pommery might have had no idea what she was setting in motion so long ago, but Ken Gargett feels that she would undoubtedly be very proud of her house today. Here he goes through her namesake bubbly.
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site: ChronoGrabs.com
Revolution
My 4th grade composition: “A most enjoyable dream” I had the most vivid dream on one wintry evening in early January. I didn’t know where I was from and when it begun. I remembered I was seemingly flying freely in a little town at Valee de Joux, and floated effortlessly into a room which looked […]
Teddy Baldassarre
Switzerland is the modern world’s center of watchmaking, with Germany a distant but respectable second in Europe and Japan having long staked out its own spot as the premier watch producer in Asia. Great Britain and the U.S.A., while no longer world leaders, both have a proud history of watchmaking and maintain a small but steadily growing cottage industry in the modern era. But France has its own respectable horological heritage, centered around the commune of Besançon (below), which borders Switzerland’s own heartland of watchmaking, the Vallée de Joux. France was, in fact, a home for many historically significant watchmakers and clockmakers, including Julien Cordray, Jean-Antoine Lépine, Ferdinand Berthoud, and Abraham-Louis Breguet (actually born in the Prussian principality that would become Neuchâtel, Switzerland, but renowned as a Paris-based watchmaker to French royalty). The latter three all plied their trade in workshops on Place Dauphine at the western tip of Paris' Île de la Cité in the Seine. Watchmaking was a thriving industry in France for a century, up until KIng Louis XIV’s (below) revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which ushered in the religious persecution of Huguenot watchmakers, who fled to Switzerland to essentially establish that nation as a horological power. The French Revolution in the 18th Century, which halted the sales of luxury goods like watches in France, further eroded the country’s watch industry, and it has never ...
SJX Watches
Phillips’s upcoming sale The Geneva Watch Auction: XXIII is packed with spectacular watches, including some already well known to collectors like the extra complicated La Royale by Louis Audemars, an unsual Patek Philippe worldtime ref. 2523, and the Golay Fils & Stahl astronomical watch. But among the finest is a simple watch that tracks only the time and state of wind, yet is comprised of several hundred parts: Victor Kullberg No 6583. Behind those three hands is a one-minute tourbillon equipped with an Earnshaw detent escapement, a massive free-sprung compensation balance, anti-magnetic helical balance spring and reverse chain and fusee, making it one of the most elaborate three-hand watches imaginable. Even at its high estimate of US$102,000, this pocket chronometer amounts to something of a steal, especially in an auction where multiple steel sports watches carry much greater estimates. The cult of the chronometer Swiss and English horologists disagreed on a great many things, from the ideal shape and material of escape wheels to the definition of a chronometer. To the Swiss, the title of chronometer was bestowed based on merit as a timekeeper. Any watch could be one if it kept good time, especially with a trusted, independent attestation of its accuracy. Watches submitted to observatory trials — or tested according to the ISO 3159:2009 standard today — are chronometers by this reckoning. England was dominated by the cult of the [marine] chronometer, unsurprisin...
SJX Watches
London, 1965. Christie’s had arranged the third and final part of the Sir David Salomons Collection for sale — a sequence of Breguet watches assembled by the Victorian baronet whose obsession with Abraham-Louis Breguet had produced the most important English-language study of the watchmaker’s work. When the bidding closed, one man had bought every lot in the catalogue. Continuing our ongoing Complicated Collectors series, Edgar Mannheimer left an indelible mark on watch collecting. He was 40 years old, and had settled in Zurich a decade earlier with nothing but the instincts he had developed in the post-war black markets of Germany. He was not a collector in the sense that he did not keep what he bought. What he did, with a consistency and conviction that separated him from every other figure in the mid-century horological trade, was understand, ahead of the market, what something was worth. The Salomons lots were subsequently divided between two collectors. It was, in miniature, a portrait of how Mannheimer operated: he absorbed the risk, resolved the complexity, and left his clients with the watches. Neutitschein and Auschwitz Edgar Mannheimer was born on December 23, 1925, in Neutitschein, Moravia, into a family whose presence in the town was visible and established. His father ran Marsmalz, a confectionery business prominent enough to operate the community’s first delivery van — a small but telling detail about the family’s position within a world where Je...
Monochrome
Parisian watchmaking maison L. Leroy was founded by Basile-Charles Le Roy in 1785 and became the official watchmaker to King Louis XVI and later to Napoleon I and Queen Victoria. Expanding operations to Switzerland, L. Leroy produced marine chronometers for the French Navy and amassed 384 gold medals in chronometry competitions. Iconic masterpieces like the […]
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Monochrome
As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. In 1904, Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont approached Louis Cartier, complaining that pocket watches were impractical in flight – he needed both hands on the controls. Louis Cartier’s solution not only marked the birth of an icon but is also widely considered the first purpose-built men’s wristwatch. […]
Monochrome
Chopard celebrates 30 years since the founding of its Manufacture in Fleurier, and the L.U.C collection, named after Louis-Ulysse Chopard, continues to highlight the brand’s most technical and refined timepieces. Among the anniversary releases, the new L.U.C XPS Prussian Blue presents an evolution of the sector-dial model in green introduced in 2024. This new edition […]
Worn & Wound
Louis-Ulysse Chopard founded his eponymous watch company in 1860, but it took over 100 years for the brand to truly come into its own. In 1996, and after three years of development, the company debuted its own in-house movement. The wait seemed to have been worth it. The L.U.C 96.01-L immediately drew acclaim for beautiful finishing, embracing the microrotor, and COSC certification. It, and the subsequent L.U.C. 1860 dress watch, marked a sea change from reliance on third parties to true independence, arriving at a resurgence in fine mechanical watchmaking. Thirty years later, the L.U.C. family has expanded into dozens of variants, complications, and movements. But at 2026’s Watches & Wonders, Chopard pays tribute to 30 years of in-house manufacturing with a continuation of that vaunted original. The L.U.C 1860 Chronometer uses the same dial and microrotor movement from 1996, albeit with their own upgrades and unique design tweaks. The intricate white-gold dial features guilloché finishing in the center, emanating in scalloped waves from the Chopard logo and nameplate. The concentric circles are separated by thin bands of white gold, and delicate spear-shaped markers point inward, toward the dauphine hands. At 6 o’clock, the small-seconds dial echoes the twin-circle pattern of the overall dial, and Chopard specifically mentions the lack of a date window “to preserve purity.” Where the first L.U.C. 1860 had a white dial with gold accents, this Chronometer wears...
Monochrome
Few complications are as closely associated with Patek Philippe as the World Time. Born in the 1930s and based on the invention of Louis Cottier, the system allows reading of the 24 time zones via a rotating city ring and a 24-hour disc, while local time is indicated centrally. Over the decades, Patek has refined its […]
SJX Watches
Breguet refreshes its Tradition collection for 2026 with new colourways and expanded grand feu enamel dial options across five references, building on the momentum of the brand’s 250th anniversary year. The line-up spans four automatic variants of the Seconde Rétrograde and one manually wound GMT, all underpinned by the architecturally distinctive cal. 505 that has defined the collection since its 2005 introduction. Initial thoughts Inspired by an original Abraham-Louis Breguet’s montres à tact pocket watch from the late 18th century, the Tradition collection, released in 2005, was Breguet’s first major new model family under Swatch Group management. The central barrel placement and unusual gear train arrangement perfectly captures the essence of the original pocket watches, and this aspect of the design remains as recognisable and distinctive as ever, despite the a growing number of independent watchmakers that have introduced watches with a similar layout. In fact, the cal. 505 is so successful as a contemporary interpretation of Breguet’s work that a variation of it was adapted for use in the award-winning Classique Souscription 2025 introduced last year. For 2026, the Tradition collection has been slightly refreshed with modern colourways and more grand feu enamel dial options. The five new models include four automatic variants of the Seconde Rétrograde, one of which features a diamond-set bezel, and one manually wound reference with a dual-time complicatio...
Video
The Longines Hydroconquest has been a popular dive watch in the slightly more accessible segment since 2007. Initially sold in both automatic and quartz versions, it offered an attainable taste of serious dive-watch p...
Fratello
It is safe to say that the past 12 months have been all about the renaissance of the jump-hour watch. With the Cartier Tank à Guichets, Audemars Piguet Neo Frame Jumping Hour, Christopher Ward C1 Jump Hour Mk V, Maen × Nico Leonard Jump Hour, and Louis Vuitton Tambour Convergence Pink Gold, we have seen […] Visit Celebrating The Spirit Of The 1920s With The Semicolon Anachron Jump-Hour Watch to read the full article.
SJX Watches
Abraham-Louis Breguet’s No. 160 exists first as legend. The standard account describes a secret commission for Marie Antoinette, incomplete when she faced execution, requiring forty-four years to finish. Theft, recovery, mystery, and royal romance: the narrative contains all the necessary elements of mythology. Yet this fame is recent. From its 1783 inscription in the order books through the 19th century, the watch remained largely unknown outside the Breguet workshop but for a few private collectors. Only when Sir David Lionel Salomons acquired it, nearly 140 years later, did the wider horological world learn of its existence, thanks to his careful cataloging and the watch’s public exhibition in 1923. Salomons gave credit to Breguet’s mastery on a scale previously unrecognised, establishing No. 160 as the supreme example of complicated watchmaking and the prime masterpiece of its maker. Sir David Lionel Salomons’s 1921 work on Breguet and the collection he assembled seems to be the first source to mention Marie Antoinette. Image SJX composite – Sotheby’s Subsequently, many sources have reported that the commission demanded every known watch complication and that no time constraints or limits were placed on its design or cost. The workshop records, however, tell a story that differs from both obscurity and legend. No. 160 appears in the 1783 order books as three words: “No. 160, Montre d’Or.” The entry stands alone, anonymous, unexplained and without cont...
Hodinkee
An introduction to 1970s Cartier, when the Paris house moved its watchmaking to Switzerland, starting with an in-depth look at the Tank Louis.
Monochrome
Abraham-Louis Perrelet made his mark in watchmaking history with his work on automatic winding. The modern Perrelet brand is recognised for its patented Double Rotor and Turbine watches, which feature hypnotic spinning rotors on the dial. Much less theatrical, Perrelet’s Weekend collection offers more traditional dress watches in 39mm cases with a subtle retro vibe. […]
SJX Watches
On episode 30 of the SJX Podcast, SJX and Brandon discuss to what extent the latest crop of jump hour watches constitutes a trend. In just the first six weeks of 2026, several new jump hour models have been released, including a new collection from Audemars Piguet and the relaunch of the Niton brand, which is discussed in detail. Even the Louis Vuitton Convergence also fits into this trend aesthetically, despite being a dragging hours construction. SJX also provides context on the leading jump hour watches in the industry, including the Zeitwerk, Vagabondage III, and Opus 3, and the latest from Berneron. SJX also shares views on whether reliability still matters in today’s market. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Video
One of the brands I talk about in this video is Seiko. Not long ago I made a video about how Seiko is “flawed but still the GOAT”
Monochrome
Since its invention by Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1801, the tourbillon has remained one of the most mesmerising mechanisms in watchmaking. Often regarded as a complication in its own right, despite not actually indicating anything most of the time, it is a very complex and extremely precise testament to the maker’s abilities, whoever it is. Rotating […]
Time+Tide
Niton and AP revive historical jumping hour watches, Sarpaneva and Urwerk go intergalactic, and Louis Vuitton teams up with De Bethune.The post New releases from Sarpaneva, Niton, Vacheron Constantin and more appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Monochrome
Unveiled on 26 June 2025, a nod to the date Abraham-Louis Breguet secured a patent for his gravity-defying tourbillon (26 June 1801), the Tourbillon Sidéral 7255 takes his groundbreaking regulator on a fascinating ride through time and space. Released for the brand’s 250th anniversary celebrations, the Breguet Classique Tourbillon Sidéral 7255 pays homage to its illustrious […]
Monochrome
For globetrotters jumping across time zones, the most useful travel companion is a GMT or a more sophisticated world timer. Although cynics will counter that argument by whipping out a mobile phone or a smartwatch, there is nothing as reassuring and personal as your very own travel watch. Thanks to Louis Cottier’s ingenious solution in […]
Monochrome
Innovation spirit and inventiveness have always been part of Breguet, specifically as its founder, Abraham-Louis Breguet, was responsible from 1775 onwards for so many of the watchmaking innovations of that era: the tourbillon, the perpétuelle watch, the natural escapement, the constant-force escapement, the shock absorber, the Breguet balance-spring with its terminal curve, the gong-spring… In […]
Video
Ever wonder how luxury watch brands really operate behind the scenes? In this video, I pull back the curtain and expose the hidden truths that collectors rarely see. From influencer and celebrity partnerships to “li...
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