810 articles · 112 videos found · page 26 of 31
Quill & Pad
For Ken Gargett, Champagne de Venoge seems more like background music than a headline act. It seems to have been around forever, usually within reach, but not chased after. However, now under new management, Ken thinks it might be worth looking out.
Hodinkee
Minimalism and yellow gold are quite the pairing.
Hodinkee
Just look at that dial.
Quill & Pad
This Breguet souscription pocket watch number 1836 was created just after the French Revolution in 1796 and was sold in 1807 for £600. A testament to the quality of the movement’s design and the skill of its watchmaker, after more than 200 years it still runs impeccably today, which makes it the perfect role model for Breguet's modern Tradition line. But what relationship does Ian have to it?
Quill & Pad
Here’s a prediction by Ian Skellern: the relatively nondescript AMC movement Urwerk presented at the 2018 SIHH will not only become one of the horological highlights of the decade, but will take its place among history’s most significant timepieces ever. That’s a bold statement. Here Ian explains why he thinks AMC is so important.
Quill & Pad
This Breguet souscription pocket watch number 1836 was created just after the French Revolution in 1796 and was sold in 1807 for £600. A testament to the quality of the movement’s design and the skill of its watchmaker, after more than 200 years it still runs perfectly today, which makes it the perfect role model for Breguet's modern Tradition line. But what relationship does Ian have to it?
Hodinkee
A spectacular collection from some of the most revered watchmakers of all time.
Revolution
Cartier announce their latest Métiers d’Art timepiece ahead of SIHH 2017, which brings a whole new craft into the maison’s knowledge set.
Revolution
Over the years Cartier has build a stunning collection of skeleton watches. Transparency has been an integral part of the Maison’s style for decades, from the first mystery clocks created in 1912 to the skeletonised movements of the 1930s. And recently for the Fine Watch Making Collection, La Maison created the Santos 100, Santos Dumont, […]
Revolution
The word “chronograph” is one which, like many technical terms in watchmaking, has drifted in meaning somewhat over the years, along with the development of the complication itself (interestingly the chronograph, despite its relative ubiquity today, was the last of the major classic complications to be developed, which speaks perhaps to the relative indifference of […]
SJX Watches
Having restored one of the Louvre’s most important timepieces – La Création du Monde, an 18th-century astronomical clock owned by King Louis XV – Vacheron Constantin subsequently announced a three-year partnership with the Parisian museum last year. The very first collaborative project between the watchmaker and museum has finally arrived: Les Cabinotiers “Bid for the Louvre”. A one-off timepiece that will feature a miniature of a work of art in Louvre selected by the client – who will chose it during a private tour of the museum – the watch will be sold at Bid for the Louvre, an online auction at Christie’s that takes place from December 1-15. Other luxury brands as well as contemporary artists have also contributed items to Bid for the Louvre, and all proceeds from the auction will go to the museum. The courtyard of the Louvre with the famous glass pyramid designed by I.M. Pei Initial thoughts Vacheron Constantin’s Métiers d’Art watches are decorated with varied artisanal decorative techniques, but they are almost always exceptionally beautiful. The dials are sometimes intricate, sometimes delicate, and occasionally elaborately ornamental, but always executed to a high level, by both the brand’s in-house artisans as well as independent specialists like Anita Porchet. In fact, many of the Métiers d’Art watches feature dial work finer than comparable watches from the competition. What makes the Louvre watch special is the opportunity to rep...
SJX Watches
Traditionally considered one of the “holy trinity” in haute horlogerie, Vacheron Constantin vast, rich archive of historical timepieces. For several years now, Vacheron Constantin has carefully mined that history, curating a compact collection of vintage watches each year for Les Collectionneurs, restored vintage watches offered at its boutiques. Les Collectionneurs includes Vacheron Constantin timepieces from the last century that span the brand’s repertoire, from the mega-rare complicated references to more affordable time-only watches – all sympathetically restored and backed by a two-year warranty. A selection of Les Collectionneurs watches are on usually show at a handful of boutiques around the world, and a 16-piece line up recently landed in Singapore. From now till March 31, 2021, the watches will be available at the Vacheron Constantin boutique in Marina Bay Sands, alongside Diptyques, an exhibition exploring the brand’s historical watches created in collaborations with other artists, jewellers, and designers (which are drawn from the brand’s museum and not for sale). Here’s a look at highlights from the Les Collectionneurs line up in Singapore. Ref. 4414 “Heure Universelle” pocket watch Completed in 1949, this yellow gold pocket watch is equipped with the world time mechanism invented by Louis Cottier. Unlike a GMT watch that tells the time in a second location, a world time use a simple but clever pair trick to show the time in all 24 time zo...
SJX Watches
Originally set up by Vacheron Constantin to build custom or bespoke watches upon client commission – like this minimalist grand complication – Les Cabinotiers has undergone a subtle evolution since chief executive Louis Ferla took over in 2017. Les Cabinotiers now creates a small collection of one-off timepieces each year. Most are marketed to the firm’s top clients, typically at a luxe but low-key annual event, but a selection is launched at SIHH. This year’s Les Cabinotiers presentation is now taking place in Singapore, and amongst the watches unveiled is the graceful Les Cabinotiers Minute Repeater Ultra-Thin ‘Romantic Note’. The watch has a largish 41mm pink gold case in the style of the Traditionnelle line, which means straight, simple lines, giving it a fairly modern look. But the dial is eminently classical: eggshell-coloured fired enamel with all the markings, namely the railway minute track and numerals, done in black enamel, matched with Breguet-style hands. Reminiscent of the asymmetrical Historiques 1921, the dial is unusual in its typography – the numerals look like Breguet numerals but are not quite, instead they are slightly more italicised, with less line variation, and heavier in weight. The movement inside is the cal. 1731, the slim, hand-wound movement that’s also found in the regular-production Patrimony minute repeater. It features a centrifugal governor for the repeater. Key facts and price Les Cabinotiers Minute Repeater Ultra-Thin ...
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.
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 […]
Time+Tide
While this week has had some interesting releases like the new Luis Vuitton Tambour W, the thing many watch enthusiasts have been discussing this week is not actually a watch or even industry news. It is a new social media platform: Threads. Meta launches Threads – will it take off within the watch community? I … ContinuedThe post FRIDAY WIND DOWN: Instagram plagiarises Twitter, HSNY charity auction kicks off appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
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 […]
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...
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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