Revolution
A Conversation with Vartan Sirmakes, Co-founder of Franck Muller It is impossible to examine the rise of Franck Muller Watchland as one of the most technically creative, fully integrated and totally verticalized manufactures in Swiss watchmaking without tapping into the brilliant mind of the brand’s co-founder, Vartan Sirmakes. Sirmakes got his start with a case-manufacturing […]
Revolution
Revolution
The Girard-perregaux 1966 Minute Repeater Is A (literally) Striking Timepiece That Puts Us Back In Touch With The Manufacture’s Horological Prowess Nomenclature aside, the Girard-Perregaux 1966 collection was actually only launched in 2006. It’s something that escapes most journalists, especially in the context of the numerous and impressive pieces that have emerged in the round, […]
Revolution
Take A Cue From The French Emperor’s Foremost Selection To be a leader, in whatever field and whether born or bred, one requires just as much fortitude as he does the respective skill and acumen. It’s not just about possessing the intellect to make the right choices for yourself and, more importantly, those following you; […]
Revolution
MB&F;’S NEW LEGACY MACHINE NO. 1 “These are the days of miracle and wonder” - Paul Simon, ‘The Boy in the Bubble’ The only thing about the Legacy Machine No. 1 that concerns Maximilian Büsser, really, is the fact that it’s vintage-looking, just when the wave of vintage-looking watches is at its peak. What if […]
Revolution
The Louis Moinet Vertalis Tourbillon “Red Stromatolite” Whatever your spiritual beliefs, there is near-universal agreement that the spirit is but a brief tenant in the body, and even today, to live out one’s biblical assurance of threescore and ten years is to consider oneself relatively lucky. We unhappy mortals, therefore, are like to surround ourselves […]
Revolution
New Watch Brands Have Been A Little Scarce Of Late, So We Were All A Tad Excited To Hear About Hyt And Its New Mechanically-powered Liquid Time Display For about a decade now, watchmakers have been looking at different ways to indicate time using systems such as orbiting satellites (URWERK), rubber belts (Claret), jumping chains […]
Revolution
Bvlgari’s New Papillon Voyageur, A Continuation Of Its Rich Daniel Roth Inheritance, Flaps Its Wings And Shrinks The World The most poetic and seductive image to arise from Edward Lorenz’s work on chaos theory is that of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil, leading to a tornado touching down in Texas. In any sensible […]
Revolution
A minute repeater is a percussion instrument. A series of (most frequently two, sometimes three or four) hammers strike gongs that have each been tuned to produce a certain note, composing a melody that can be translated into a report of the time by those initiated into the discipline of repeating watches. Its matched hammers […]
Revolution
A quarter-mile offshore and 80 feet below the surfaceof Lake Superior, my friend, Chris, and I found the Madeira’s pilothouse - standing upright, its compass binnacle still intact, belying the violence of the ship’s demise. The rest of the wreck is strewn over an acre of lakebed - twisted bollards, winches torn free and the […]
Revolution
The Rotonde De Cartier Minute Repeater Flying Tourbillon Cartier has, over its 108-year history with the men’s wristwatch, occasionally produced some visually and aurally arousing timepieces. One such watch, a magnificent yellow-gold Tortue minute repeater from the 1920s, was proudly on display during the brand’s Time Art exhibition in Singapore, which traced its history in […]
Revolution
My interview with Hamdi Chatti, the vice president of Louis Vuitton Watches, was one of the most interesting of the 2012 Basel fair. The main topic of conversation related to this: I strongly believe that in the years ahead, the strongest and most established brands will only become stronger and continue to gain market share. […]
Revolution
Vacheron Constantin’s tonneau-shaped watch, the Malte, celebrates 100 years with two new models It’s been a century since Vacheron Constantin introduced its first tonneau-shaped wristwatch - which was probably among the first series-produced wristwatches ever made, as 100 years ago, in 1912, the wristwatch was still very much a novelty, tonneau or otherwise. The tonneau shape […]
Revolution
The Rise Of Patek Philippine’s Nautilus The year of the Nautilus was 1976. Out in the wider world, the space race had recently culminated in the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission that saw a US Apollo craft dock with the Soviet Soyuz 19 in space - an extended act of diplomacy. The Cold War was at the uneasy stage of hiatus known […]
Revolution
Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Grande Reverso Blue Enamel sings the blues like no lady ever has The color blue has often been associated with the most iconoclastic work of the 20th century’s cultural contributors. “Rhapsody in Blue” established George Gershwin’s reputation as one of America’s seminal composers. “Blue Train”, John Coltrane’s 32-bar form masterpiece and also the name […]
Revolution
I am trying to learn how to Dougie. For those of you who are not as sentiently tapped into the zeitgeist of rap culture, this is a dance that involves you moving from side to side whilst rolling your shoulders, ironically enough, kind of like Axl Rose. This is important for me because I like […]
Revolution
Many brands claim their minute repeaters sound the best. But who can tell the difference? Who has access to several such watches at the same time? We’ve gathered, recorded and ranked five of them, On paper, and also on video EDITOR’S NOTE: The judging of minute repeaters, as our intrepid contributor David Chokron states below, […]
Revolution
REVOLUTION PUTS ERIC GIROUD (OWNER AND DESIGNER, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS) AND JEAN-MARC WIEDERRECHT (FOUNDER AND WATCHMAKER, AGENHOR) UNDER THE LOUPE FOR SOME QUALITY Q&A; Eric Giroud and Jean-Marc Wiederrecht are no strangers to each other, having collaborated on projects such as the gem-clad Harry Winston Opus 9 and MB&F;’s Horological Machines. Together or apart, the […]
Revolution
Mechanical oscillators like the pendulum and balance wheel are what actually tell time - and today’s latest experiments by some of watchmaking’s most daring researchers are paving the way for the watches of tomorrow At their most basic, any time-measuring device - whether it’s a longcase pendulum clock, or the most sophisticated cesium fountain […]
Revolution
It’s an old story: boy meets dive watch, boy gets dive watch, boy gets a lot of snarky flak from people who ask him why he wears a dive watch when the deepest body of water he ever gets into comes in a porcelain tub, with spigots marked “Hot” and “Cold”. Oh, ye of little […]
Revolution
Far and away the most tested watches in the world, Omega’s Speedmasters have remained miles beyond (and, quite often, above) the competition It’s hard to make a good spinoff. Take Baywatch Nights, the offshoot of the ’90s beach drama that bombarded audiences with bodacious, buxom bods (and, with 1.1 billion viewers worldwide - surely transfixed […]
Revolution
Revolution
William Cowper’s poem, The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk, popularized the phrase “the monarch of all I survey”. And in some ways, the world’s most legendary balls, which the iconic Parisian jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels has seen fit to pay tribute to with a series of exceptional watches, are each expressions of one individual’s remaking of […]
Revolution
A new world-time watch from iwc, inspired by its highly coveted historical mark timepieces The enforced passivity of modern air travel has probably been responsible for more fantasies of actually sitting in the cockpit of a high-performance fighter jet than The Right Stuff, Top Gun and all of the Iron Eagle movies put together. But for […]
Revolution
The rotonde de cartier annual calendar is a robust and practical addition to the brand’s collection Thirty days hath September, April, June and November,” goeth the doggerel verse, reminding us of the irregularity of the Gregorian calendar - a verse which also serves to remind owners of mechanical watches with simple calendars that for five […]
Revolution
The governor is one of the most critical components in a chiming watch. It’s responsible for setting the tempo at which the watch chimes and ensuring that it’s neither too fast nor too slow. If the hammer and gongs are the orchestra, the governor is the conductor. Ideally, the governor of a repeater does its […]
Revolution
It’s the queen of complications and really understanding it is a lifetime study - but you gotta start somewhere. REVOLUTION brings you a brief introduction to some of the inside secrets of watchmaking’s most romantic complication The minute repeater is both the most sophisticated of complications and the most atavistic - sophisticated, in that it requires enormous […]
Revolution
FOUR DECADES OF THE REMARKABLE ROYAL OAK FROM AUDEMARS PIGUET There are certainly watches made in larger numbers, but there are few more instantly recognizable than the Royal Oak, from Audemars Piguet. Forty years since its 1972 introduction, the Royal Oak has become not only the watch associated by enthusiasts with the small Le Brassus-based […]
Revolution
A. lange & Söhne’s saxonia thin is the manufacture’s slimmest watch to date In what must count as one of the biggest comebacks since the mechanical wristwatch reinvented itself in the post-quartz era as a luxury necessity, the thin dress watch - once driven underground and nearly into extinction by the dinosaurian dimensions toward which […]
Revolution
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