27,006 articles · 259 videos found · page 450 of 909
Monochrome
One of the rising stars of the young Dutch independent watchmaking scene, De Rijke & Co. Watches, founded by Laurens De Rijke, started as a fun project during a… vintage Vespa moped road trip through eastern Europe. From there, what was a side project turned into a more prolific indie watch brand with always a […]
Fratello
For some of you, the bold case shape will be instantly recognizable as a Schofield creation. But while it is indeed symbolic of the brand, this is a very different product of Giles Ellis’s furtive imagination. Does it set the tone for what can be a stand-alone totem of a watch or a new line […] Visit Introducing: The Schofield Obscura - Adding Metallurgic Marvel To A Classic Shape to read the full article.
Monochrome
Gerald Genta is surely mostly known for his work with Audemars Piguet (1972, Royal Oak), Patek Philippe (Nautilus, 1976) or his own bold and original creations. There is, however, much more to the man than just these two icons of the luxury sports watch category (think Universal Geneve Polerouter, Omega Constellation or Rolex King Midas). […]
Fratello
The young Swedish brand Nezumi has made a name for itself with a catalog of stylish, affordable watches. Now, with the release of its new Terrain field watch, the Stockholm-based brand has completed its ultimate traveling triumvirate, the Adventure Trio. Alongside the new Terrain, we have the relatively longstanding but revised Baleine dive watch and […] Visit Hands-On With The Nezumi Adventure Trio That Lets You Travel The World In Style to read the full article.
Fratello
The Hermès Cut debuted in April at Watches and Wonders in Geneva. That’s why we were quite surprised when we received an invite from Hermès for a press trip organized around this new watch. Usually, trips like this are organized in advance to focus everyone’s attention on the novelty. It’s also common that the program […] Visit Hands-On With The Hermès Cut On The Calm Greek Island Of Tinos to read the full article.
SJX Watches
The most significant example of independent watchmaking in Phillips’ upcoming New York sale is Philippe Dufour Duality no. 3 in white gold. One of just nine made, this Duality is unusual in several respects. For one, it is delivered with two dials, each representing one of Mr Dufour’s trademark style – silvered and a white lacquer resembling enamel. Besides being an exceptionally rare watch, this Duality is also significant for its provenance: the current owner is both a gentleman and a collector with a discerning eye. In fact, he recognised the importance and appeal of the Duality well before most others did. At the time he bought this watch, now almost 20 years ago, a Philippe Dufour Simplicity was selling for barely more than a Lange Datograph. In fact, there were sought-after Panerai and Audemars Piguet Offshore models selling easily for more than a Simplicity. The owner’s discerning and forward-thinking taste in watches can also be inferred from his other watches in the sale. Amongst them is an F.P. Journe Tourbillon Souverain ref. TN – with a special-order 38 mm case instead of the conventional 40 mm, as well as a matched, three-piece set of the F.P. Journe Vagabondage in platinum. A tribute to the Vallée Launched in 1996, the Duality is one of the two landmark double balance wheel watches in contemporary watchmaking, alongside the F.P. Journe Resonance that debuted four years later. While the Resonance is arguably more abstract and inventive in its concep...
Worn & Wound
Editor’s Note: Time Through the Ages is a four part series written by Andrew Canter, member of the British Horological Institute, Alliance of British Watch & Clock Makers, and the British Watch & Clock Makers Guild. In this second installment, Andrew examines the life and career of Abraham-Louis Breguet, inventor of the tourbillon and many other important watchmaking advancements. For more from Andrew, check out his work at Mr. WatchMaster. Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747–1823) was a designer, inventor, and watchmaker. Being a master craftsman in the field of watchmaking earned him a prestigious clientele that included Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, alongside other international nobility, and the elegance and technical innovations of his designs were considered the height of style and fashion. Portrait of Abraham-Louis Breguet. Image courtesy of Manufacture Breguet Breguet was born in Neuchâtel on the 10th January 1747, but it was in Paris that he spent most of his productive life. He is credited with the development of the successful self-winding perpétuelle watches, the introduction of the gongs for repeating watches, the first shock-protection for balance pivots and of course the tourbillon. Every watch that left his workshops demonstrated the latest horological improvements in an original movement, mostly fitted with lever or ruby-cylinder escapements that he perfected. He was a great entrepreneur and marketed his magnificent watches brilliantly. Perhaps his most ...
SJX Watches
IWC just revealed an experimental Pilot’s chronograph with a luminous ceramic case – on the wrist of Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton at the Monaco Grand Prix. Christened Ceralume, the material was developed XPL, the watchmaker’s experimental engineering department. According to IWC, the Ceralume concept watch was glowing a bright blue for more than 24 hours in dark chamber tests (although it didn’t state how the material was “charged” prior to the test). According to IWC, the patent-pending material is created by blending ceramic powder with Super-Luminova, the luminous material produced by RC Tritec that absorbs light energy and then emits it. Being non-radioactive, Super-Luminova is widely used to illuminate watch dials, and also suited to a case material. Though IWC has not revealed specifics about future plans for the material, it did say Ceralume will “form the foundation of future developments and releases.” Lewis Hamilton at the 2024 Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix Initial thoughts Ever since the discovery of radium in 1898, luminous materials have become commonplace in watches, primarily to aid legibility. With legibility being less crucial today, luminous paint is increasingly used for purely aesthetic purposes. Moreover, luminous ceramic is not actually new. Tudor, for instance, used luminous ceramic hour markers in the Black Bay Pro of 2022. IWC is the first to make an entire case from the material, albeit not one that is available commercially (ye...
Worn & Wound
Bell & Ross is continuing to fill out their updated BR 03 collection with new references to accommodate the subtly smaller case they introduced last year. Brad Homes went hands-on with the new, more refined case right here, and found the differences to be small, but an overall improvement. It’s important not to underestimate either the scope of the change for Bell & Ross or the potential impact small adjustments can have on a watch case, particularly when you’re dealing with a square design like the BR 03. Bell & Ross fans (I’m raising my hand here) have strong feelings about their iconic square case designs, so any small adjustment is going to be met with the kind of intense critique that can only come from an enthusiast community. It seems, though, that the updates have been well received, and the latest addition, the BR 03 White Steel & Gold, brings a very different flavor to traditional tool watch design. The stated goal of the White Steel & Gold reference is to bring a more sophisticated look to the BR 03 line, one that is, in Bell & Ross terms, “both urban and elegant.” While we still have the vague outline of an aviation inspired tool watch, the details come from an entirely different place. The bezel is rendered in rose gold, and the crisp opaline dial has matching gold tone accents. While the gold is likely the design characteristic that will draw most to the watch initially, the dial appears to have a very fine texture and character to it that could w...
Monochrome
The BR 01 is the face that launched a thousand ships for Bell & Ross, capturing the military and aviation inspiration that has come to define this brand. Unveiled in 2005, the BR 01’s distinctive square case with four screws and a round, cockpit instrument-inspired dial became the brand’s foundation watch. With its oversized 46mm […]
Fratello
One of the biggest recent watch surprises happened the day before Watches and Wonders 2024. Impressively, the watches even captivated all four of the Fratello team members who were there. Normally, a watch release provokes much debate among us. However, the enthusiasm for the four different HYT T1 watches presented on the banks of Lake […] Visit Keeping Things Fluid This Monday Morning With The HYT T1 - A Closed Dial Opens Up A World Of Opportunities to read the full article.
Fratello
Grab a cup of coffee, and get ready for a new Sunday Morning Showdown. For this week’s battle, we have selected two new Tudor introductions. During Watches and Wonders this year, many watch fans agreed that Tudor’s releases were more exciting than Rolex’s. So what if we put two popular Tudor watches up against each […] Visit Sunday Morning Showdown: Tudor Black Bay 58 GMT Vs. Black Bay Master Chronometer In Black to read the full article.
Monochrome
Summer is in the air, and the holiday season is just around the corner. As a brand that has never been shy of colour, Oris proposes two watermelon-coloured models for its versatile Aquis Date 41.5mm dive watch. Perfect for outdoor activities but smart enough to wear daily, the Aquis Date collection was recently refreshed. The […]
Quill & Pad
Since taking over as CEO of Parmigiani Fleurier in 2021, Guido Terreni has leaned into the brand’s legacy as a maker of classic dress watches at the level of high watchmaking. Not by making a dramatic statement piece but by doubling down on refinement. Having reintroduced the Tonda, and picking up a GPHG award for it in 2022, Terreni turned his attention to the Toric, the golden-ratio proportioned flagship dress watch that was Michel Parmigiani’s first design.
Fratello
Dive watches are the go-to for many watch collectors. They outstrip the standard “tool watch” moniker with, usually, enhanced specs, such as better water resistance. As a result, dive watches are usually aimed at those professionals for whom they are designed. You know, divers. These days, this results in an instantly recognizable aesthetic that is […] Visit Hands-On With The High-End Dressy Monarque M Diver From Milléchron to read the full article.
Worn & Wound
It’s been a few years since Ming released the massively popular 18.01 H41 dive watch, and fans of the brand have been clamoring for more ever since. It would have been easy enough for Ming to re-release the 18.01, maybe with a new colorway, but the brand is not one to rest on their past successes and the Ming 37.09 Bluefin is far more than a slight update to a familiar model. Instead, Ming has completely re-thought what a dive watch from Ming can be, and the results are absolutely stunning - and quintessentially Ming. If you follow Ming on social media, the release of the 37.09 Bluefin today shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. After all, the brand has been posting throwbacks and teasers left and right to get us all excited about this release. Today, we get to see the new watch: A 600 meter water-resistant, dual crown diver inspired by the architecture of Ming’s recent 37-series watches, complete with Ming’s signature flared lugs and a preposterous preponderance of lume. Whether putting out affordable time-only watches or ultra-light record-setters and wild tourbillons, Ming has been unafraid and uncompromising. This details-first approach might help to explain why it took so long for Ming to follow up on the 18.01. Apparently, Ming experimented with several successors to their first dive watch, focusing on outperforming the 1000 meter water-resistant dive watch on a technical level. Eventually, after producing several prototypes at thicknesses creeping up to ...
Fratello
Designing and producing robust and elegant wristwatches is what it’s all about for Serica. Today, the brand’s founders Jérôme Burgert and Gabriel Vachette launch a new iteration of their 6190 field watch. Although under a different name (or reference, for that matter), this is where it all started for the young Parisian brand. You’ll see, […] Visit Introducing: The Serica 6190 M.S.L. Chronometer In Black, White, And Gray to read the full article.
Time+Tide
A mechanical watch may be the sustainable option for the environment, but does the same apply when it comes to your wallet?The post How much does a lifetime of servicing actually cost? appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Fratello
This watch has been sitting in my safe and waiting for its moment for ages! After several weeks of heavy-hitting Gallet chronographs, I spotted a watch lying face down in the corner of the safe. I turned it over, and there it was - my abandoned crazy-lumed Citizen Auto Dater 7. I took it out […] Visit #TBT An Intriguing Citizen Auto Dater 7 APSS52903-T With Out-Of-The-Box Lume to read the full article.
Monochrome
A classic that has been in the collection for over 12 years and, without a doubt, the brand’s cornerstone model, the classic 41mm Tudor Black Bay is now in its third generation. If design-wise not much has changed at first sight, the watch you see today is, in many ways, a much more advanced instrument […]
Worn & Wound
There are few brands that the watch community collectively holds in higher esteem than Jaeger-LeCoultre. Think about the truly historic names in watchmaking and you’ll find vocal groups of detractors for just about every single one. But JLC is different, and always seems to be above the fray. The “watchmaker’s watchmaker” stuff is a clever bit of marketing, but it’s actually true, and keeps the brand both insulated from the watch world’s hot-take culture protected by legitimate ties to some of the most important watches ever made. But if there’s one thing, one very small thing that enthusiasts and collectors can poke at with Jaeger-LeCoultre, it’s their recent fumbling in the area of sports oriented watches. Now, you might be saying to yourself that JLC just isn’t a “sports watch” brand, and that refined dress watches and expert technical watchmaking is their brand and butter. Of course that’s true, but JLC has made great sports watches in the past with innovative cases and movements by their own design made to be robust enough for nearly any activity. It’s a genre they’ve played in for decades. The Reverso, of course, now thought of as a dress piece, was originally conceived for polo players. If you do a Chrono24 search for Memovox references from the 1970s you’ll find no shortage of oversized, funky, cases. And of course we can’t forget the last great sports watch line Jaeger-LeCoultre had, the impressively overbuilt Master Compressor co...
Fratello
Sixteen years ago this month, my friend and legendary chronograph collector Chuck Maddox passed away. The Speedmaster Mark II was the watch that got him into watches and Speedmasters specifically. However, his quest for the Speedmaster ST 376.0822 became incredibly famous. He searched for this watch with the intensity that King Arthur searched for the […] Visit From The Archives: The Omega Speedmaster Holy Grail to read the full article.
Teddy Baldassarre
Last year, Longines relaunched the Conquest, a mainstay of its collection since the mid-1950s, in a new execution heavily influenced by its earliest vintage forebears and staking out a dressier territory than its sporty dive-watch sibling, the Hydroconquest. Longines set out to expand the new Conquest’s appeal this year with a new series of models in unisex 38mm cases. Read on for a hands-on review of the new Conquest 38 with an effervescent champagne dial. Longines, founded in 1832 in the Jura valley of Switzerland, where it remains headquartered today, can claim a variety of milestones in its long history, including one that is largely overlooked. In the 1950s, Longines became one of the first watchmakers to introduce product “families,” today a staple of the watch industry; the first was the Conquest collection, whose name was registered on April 3, 1954 with the Swiss Registry of Intellectual Property and which launched that same year. Like just about any timepiece well past the half-century mark on the market, the Conquest has evolved substantially over the decades since. The first Conquest (Heritage re-edition pictured above) was a model of midcentury masculine simplicity, and one of the first wristwatches notable for its high levels of waterproofness and magnetic resistance. Its steel case measured a modest (but at the time standard) 35.2mm and fastened via wide, chamfered lugs to a leather strap. Its champagne-colored dial had arrowhead-style notched indexes ...
Fratello
The contemporary Jaeger-LeCoultre Polaris debuted six years ago. Since then, new variations have emerged, including a chronograph, a perpetual calendar, and the Mariner Memovox alarm model. But a multi-time-zone version was missing from the revived lineup - until today. The Polaris Geographic is a travel watch with one of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s signature complications. One glance at […] Visit Introducing: The Jaeger-LeCoultre Polaris Geographic - A Characteristic Complication Surfaces to read the full article.
Worn & Wound
This coming June 6 marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Vertex, the UK based watch brand headed by Don Cochrane, supplied 1,776 watches to British forces on D-Day, and to commemorate the occasion the brand has released a new reference. The M36 feels very much like a watch that Vertex could have produced at any time, but it makes particular sense in the context of the D-Day anniversary. It’s impossible to look at a watch in this style (and these proportions) from a brand with the history of Vertex and not think about the past. The M36 was conceived as a watch that would borrow significantly from vintage military issued timepieces. To a certain extent, all Vertex watches do this. It’s in the brand’s DNA and is inescapable in the watches they make. But the M36 goes a few steps further. The case, for one, is a compact 36mm in size, which is true to the vintage watches that Vertex would have supplied, and makes the new watch a solid option for virtually anyone today. The sapphire crystal is box shaped as opposed to domed, which gives it an additional layer of vintage charm, and the straightforward dial layout with large Arabic numerals and a railroad minutes track are right in line with WWII era watches. The watch runs on a workhorse automatic Sellita caliber and is equipped with an anti-magnetic Nivarox hairspring. The crown screws down, and provides 100 meters of water resistance. There’s also plenty of molded X1 Super-LumiNova on the dial, which if it glows anyth...
Fratello
We’ve all heard it: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.” This advertising slogan became almost as iconic as the watches themselves. That’s understandable, too, considering how it tugs at the heartstrings and strongly implies superior quality. But what charges a watch with heirloom quality? And […] Visit Pass It On - The Heirloom Quality Of Properly Made Watches to read the full article.
SJX Watches
The spring auction season in Geneva started dramatically enough with a cyberattack at Christie’s that took down its website and app. Only Watch went ahead as scheduled, however, and raised over CHF28.3 million, with most of that coming from the Patek Philippe Grande Sonnerie ref. 6301A that sold for CHF15.7 million. What transpired at Only Watch also played out in the subsequent auctions over the weekend. The live sales at the four auction houses, Antiquorum, Christie’s, Phillips, and Sotheby’s, sold almost CHF85 million of watches, including fees (excluding Only Watch). This compared to over well CHF110 million for Geneva’s fall season last year. Although the sale season six months ago was buoyed by an extra live auction at Christie’s (that was subject of much chatter), the diminished total for this season reflects the state of the market. The waning sentiment was palpable in all the salerooms. That said, the auctions did throw up a handful of grand surprises, including CHF3.13 million for the Patek Philippe ref. 605 HU world time pocket watch with cloisonné enamel dial at Antiquorum, and CHF1.16 million for the Rexhep Rexhepi Chronomètre Contemporain I at Phillips. Christie’s sold the most expensive wristwatch this season with CHF2.47 million for a Patek Philippe ref. 1518 “pink on pink” (above), though Antiquorum claimed the title for most valuable timepiece with its ref. 605 HU pocket watch. Image – Christie’s The good and great indies One of the ...
Fratello
Four years ago, H. Moser & Cie. gave the watch world the Streamliner Centre Seconds Matrix Green. The watch became a fan favorite and earned the nickname “Green Dragon.” Since 2024 is the Year of the Dragon in Chinese astrology, the return of the “Green Dragon” is hardly a surprise. The fact that the illustrious […] Visit Introducing: The Updated H. Moser & Cie. Streamliner Centre Seconds Matrix Green And Purple Haze to read the full article.
Revolution
In this episode of The Collector’s Perspective, Constant sits down with Omar Traboulsi, known for his Instagram handle @thewrongwrist. For the first time ever, we’re featuring a double interview format: Omar interviews Constant about his watch collection, and Constant interviews Omar about his own. Join us as two watch collectors come together, blending vintage and […]
WatchAdvice
In the early 2020s, everything was shut down, and the watch industry was beginning to stagnate. However, one man decided to make the most of it and designed a watch – inadvertently helping facilitate the ‘Rise of the Microbrand.’ But do we believe the hype? Let’s find out! What We Like: A non-serious yet refined design Remarkable build quality for the price point Comfortable and well-made strap with plenty of adjustment What We Don’t: Insufficient lume Crown and pushers are extremely fiddly to use Low power reserve Overall Rating: 8.5/10 Value for Money: 9/10 Wearability: 8/10 Design: 10/10 Build Quality: 7/10 The 2020s post-pandemic watch industry has been coined by some to be the ‘Rise of the Microbrand.’ for those unfamiliar with the term, a microbrand is a watch brand, usually independently owned and run by a small team – Essentially a small business or a start-up, in normal terms. What the ‘Rise of the Microbrand’ indicates is the massive resurgence of interest in said start-ups, which in turn has been a contributing factor to saving modern horology as we know it. That might sound like hyperbole to you, but I don’t say it lightly – Microbrands like Christopher Ward, Baltic, Formex and Farer have grown to the point where they now challenge household names. Every day, promising young microbrands such as HZ Watches also come out of the woodwork, transforming the industry in small but significant ways. We even got the chance to look at a HZ wat...
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