By the time they have over 30 horological patents under their belt, you would assume that a watchmaker would be spoken of in the same breath as the modern independent greats, like F. P. Journe or Philippe Dufour. And yet despite working for Patek Philippe, Ulysse Nardin, and Girard-Perregaux over the years, you may well not have heard of Stéphane von Gunten.

Last year, Stéphane launched Haute-Rive, a shiny new independent watchmaker and the first with the master horologist and inventor at the helm. As alluded to, the fifth-generation watchmaker had been working quietly behind the scenes for decades, but it took the impetus of Covid for him to make the big leap. But before we get into his modern watches, it’s worth looking at his horological past – and one watch, in particular.

Irénée Aubry’s Montre du Pape (Pope’s Watch)

It’s pretty common for the Pope to receive gifts. There’s a reason the last Pope had a Lamborghini and it’s not because he’s an adrenaline-fuelled hype beast. In 1888, to mark the jubilee of Pope Leo XIII, that gift came in the form of a gorgeous gold pocket watch. Nothing too unusual there – except that the power reserve was a staggering 40 days. That’s well over a month of power on a single wind. The maker of that watch was Stéphane’s ancestor, Irénée Aubry.

Irénée Aubry’s Hebdomas 8 day Pocket Watch

Power reserve is actually something that Stéphane has pushed throughout his career, no matter what brand he’s working for at the time. No multi-axis tourbillons, no complex chiming arrays, just that one, incredibly useful aspect of a timepiece’s spec sheet. And it’s that aspect that Haute-Rive is built around. The brand’s debut watch says it all, the phenomenal Honoris I.

On the surface, the Honoris I is an aesthetically elegant timepiece in the vein of other independent watchmakers. It comes with a grand feu enamel dial in a gold case, sized at a large-but-wearable 42.5mm. And yet there’s more going on than a glance can take in. For one, while the six o’clock tourbillon, the central gear bridge and the so-called ‘wheel of time’ at 12 o’clock are all visible, they’re not visibly connected. This means that while the elements are on top, the real work is happening underneath that enamel.

It’s a similar concept to something like MB&F’s Legacy Machines, just a bit more subtle. The thing is, while that over-and-under of components defines the look of the watch, it’s what you can’t see that defines what it actually is. You see, while his ancestor may have managed a watch with a 40-day power reserve,  Stéphane has achieved 41, around 1,000 hours. And in a single-barrelled wristwatch at that.

To get there, the mainspring is 3m long. That’s a single, 3-metre-long piece of metal that’s been curled into a spring that can fit in one small section of a none-too-large watch. While it sounds simple, there’s a reason it’s not been done before. So how do you fit that kind of thing in a wristwatch? By turning the mainplate into the barrel. Obviously.

As if upsetting the entire architecture of a watch wasn’t enough, anything with a power reserve this long likely needs a winding system more substantial than a standard crown. For one, that’s a lot of twisting a tiny component; for another, it would put a lot of force on the crown’s stem as you approach the upper power limit. So, Stéphane took a different approach and commandeered the bezel.

As you’ve likely noticed, the bezel is grooved with grips, allowing you to easily turn it counter clockwise to wind the mainspring. It’s still a fair amount of winding of course, you’re funnelling a lot of energy in, but it’s far superior to the crown, and you can keep an eye on how much you’ve wound it on the back of the watch. And hey, you only need to do it once a month – with a 10-day safety buffer.

For many watchmakers, power reserve is a nice thing to have; a selling point but not exactly a headline-grabbing one. A few hours here or there is more an afterthought than a core idea. Stéphane on the other had has used Haute-Rive to completely change the architecture of a traditional timepiece, specifically to put power reserve at the metaphorical and literal heart of the watch.

Haute-Rive is of course a brand that won’t have many collections in the future and won’t produce hundreds of watches. But if the Honoris I is anything to go by, he might just be one of the most low-key exciting independents around – and if you didn’t know about him before, you do now. You’re welcome.

More details at Haute-Rive.

Independent watchmaking is still very much in its ascendency. I’m not about to say that the big marquee groups – LMVH, Richemont, and Swatch – aren’t still killing it with numbers and sheer visibility, but more and more individual horological maestros are making their presence felt. Kudoke is very aesthetic, in a very German way.

As with all independent brands, Kudoke has a face: that of Stefan Kudoke. And it’s a frustratingly youthful face at that. This is a man who has already achieved some impressive credentials in the watchmaking world, working for Breguet, Blancpain and Omega, and at just 22, earning a Master Craftsman Certificate. In Germany, that’s no small thing. He’s a stark counterpoint to that classic image of a little old man machining dials in the Alpine winter.

Kudoke 1

And yet, Kudoke is still very much along those lines, at least insofar as production goes. Stefan doesn’t have the fancy manufactures of Glashütte, nor does he simply buy in everything he needs ready to go. Instead, he does the watchmaking equivalent of working from home, working at the proverbial kitchen table in a pared-back workshop based in Weifa, a small town in east Germany. It’s a much humbler approach than he would have been used to at Omega.

Humble though might be the most apt word for Kudoke as a brand. Take one look at the Kudoke 1, their perennial flagship with its nine o’clock small seconds and beautifully machined… everything. There are distinct Saxon flavours going on and while the comparison to Lange might be a bit too obvious, it’s still apt. The Kudoke 1 embodies that distinctly German balance of elegance and understatement – albeit a bit more on the elegant side.

Kudoke 2

The main difference is that, while the quality is very much on par with the most prestigious German watchmaker, the prices are not. Just over £12,500 isn’t cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but when you get a solid gold case, a manufacture movement and painfully perfect finishing across the board, that number starts to feel like a serious value proposition.

Following the initial Kudoke 1, the brand only consolidated that bang for your buck with the day- night indicating Kudoke 2, the stunning triple retrograde Kudoke 3 and a wonderfully accessible Louis Erard Regulateur. They all share the same sensibilities, albeit with a bit more colour on that last, collaborative effort. But all of those models across the board actually comprise one half of what Kudoke can do, labelled Handwerk meaning, simply, handwork. The other side of the brand is very, very different: Kunstwerk.

Le Régulateur Louis Erard x Kudoke

Kunstwerk translates to work of art, so you might think you know what to expect here. Plenty of metier d’art techniques, perhaps some enamelling or even a cheeky bit of marquetry these days, all very low-key gorgeous and sehr Deutsche. What you probably weren’t expecting was a three-dimensional octopus breaking its way out of the dial like a Kraken rum advert.

Kudoke KudOktopus

The KudOktopus is just one design in a pantheon of gorgeous engravings, but its sculptural nature is very much the way Kudoke have embraced their artistic side. Showing hints of the manufacture movement underneath, it’s not just worryingly lifelike at the front, but those tentacles continue to grasp the movement on the caseback, too. While I never expected to utter the phrase ‘exceptionally rendered suckers’, I guess I have to, because they are weirdly stunning.

There’s normally a premium for this kind of attention to detail and beyond next-level finishing. And while the tourbillon-equipped editions are indeed pricey, the automatics come in at under £8,000. It’s not like these are mass-produced; they’re special rarities that have hours upon hours of labour lavished on them. Kudoke could ask for a chunk of change more and the KudOktopus would still feel undervalued.

Kudoke Real Skeleton

Like I said at the beginning, independent watchmaking is still very much on the rise. But it’s reassuring that, where the Journes and Dufours of the world still claim insane, headline-grabbing valuations, there are brands out there not just making great watches, but doing so at a fair price, not driven by hype. Between their classic Saxon looks on one side and their sculptural engravings on the other, Kudoke might just be Germany’s best kept watchmaking secret.

More details at Kudoke.

“The difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad.” It’s not too much of a surprise Salvador Dali had to come up with a pithy response around his ‘paranoiac-critical method’. The idea of deliberately causing hallucinations for your art smacks of more than a little madness. He wanted to allow his brain to form links between things that the rational mind would not conceive, deliriously associating disparate objects or concepts.

If that all sounds a bit much, this was surrealism and surrealism revelled in the strange. For them, dropping mescaline was a perfectly fitting way to create art – and it worked. In 1931, the results of Dali’s method presented themselves in one of the most famous works of art ever created: The Persistence of Memory.

The Persistence of Memory

Even if you don’t know the name, you know the painting, with its melting clocks. As a work, it’s easy to extrapolate themes from, perceptions of time, the surrealist collapse of established order or, in the artists own words, a camembert melting in the sun. No matter your own interpretation, it’s a fascinating piece and one that has inspired generations of creatives from its home at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

So, why does this all matter? Other than the link between surrealism and watches that The Persistence of Memory represents, of course. Well, that’s because one watch brand has decided to interpret the ambiguous work very, very literally: Exaequo. Exaequo does one thing and one thing only, a physical interpretation of Dali’s melting watches dubbed, intuitively, the Melting Watch. This isn’t just ‘inspired’ by surrealism; the case has been rendered to that it looks like a round watch that’s been pinched in the middle, squashed into some approximation of a figure of eight. There’s nothing else quite like it on the market – and the dial takes things even further.

Exaequo has opted for Roman numerals, with the numbers themselves expanding into their space between the railway minute track and the lower, stepped down centre of the dial. That means they go from, larger at 12 and six o’clock to tiny and cramped at three o’clock and nine. Even that railway minute track around the edge of the two-level dial fits in a show of serious dedication to that surrealist theme.

The Melting Watch is available in a few colourways. Firstly, the case is available in steel or gold PVD. The gold is definitely a striking option, but I only really like PVD on a sports watch personally. Sure, it’s unique, but the Melting Watch is ostensibly a dress piece, so a proper gold case wouldn’t risk damage. It would however jump the price up hugely and accessibility, as we’ll get onto, is a good part of Exaequo.

Dial-wise you’re looking at the usual suspects: black, silver, blue and green, with a funky yellow dial rounding things off with a twist. The green version has gold numerals in the PVD case, silver numerals in the steel, but the rest are the same between models. It’s a solid selection, but I would have liked to see it with Arabic numerals as an option. After all, the watches in The Persistence of Memory have them, and that’s a large part of the inspiration here.

Obviously, this isn’t the first weirdly asymmetrical watch to ever be built; the Cartier Crash is a grail watch that most collectors would drop more than mescaline for. But where that haute horology rarity often achieves eye-watering auction prices, Exaequo offers their slice of surrealist madness for a fraction of the price – fitting given the name translates to ‘on equal footing.’

That’s largely due to the movement more than anything else, which is an ever-reliable quartz number, the Ronda 751-1. Sure, I’d like to see something like this with an automatic, but given the unique case shape, that’s easier said than done. Quartz can be smaller and slimmer at this price point, making sure that the curvaceous case doesn’t balloon to a weirdly inflated size.

This isn’t high watchmaking, far from it in fact. The stainless-steel version will set you back CHF 520, around £465, with the PVD version a tiny increase on that. But for the artistically inclined this is a fantastic, accessible and inspired take on surrealism made real. If someone told me that someone was going to create a melting watch based on Dali, I’d have probably called him a madman. The difference, it turns out, is that he’s not mad. Here’s hoping that not-madness extends to automatics in the future.

More details at Exaequo.

Sometimes there can be a bit of a disconnect between what watch collectors in a general sense think a watch should be and what the professionals actually using those watches need. That disconnect comes in myriad forms, but the one that stands out the most is a grudge match that’s been happening since the late 1970s: quartz vs automatic.

Automatic is, of course, the more prestigious of the two, purely mechanical and theoretically eternal – with a bit of servicing, of course. But the problem is, they’re simply less accurate and less reliable than their battery-powered siblings – which is why you often find that watches squarely aimed at professionals use quartz. After all, when accurate timekeeping is more important than resale value, there’s no competition between the two.

ProTek Official USMC Series, quartz (PT1016D)

It’s no surprise therefore that ProTek, who have been unashamedly building watches for the military, have thus far relied almost entirely on quartz movements. Unlike other brands, for them it’s never been about cost (quartz being markedly cheaper than mechanical), otherwise they would have settled for standard lume instead of the intense H3 gas tubes they’ve made their name with. Instead, it’s always been about building the best tool for the job – even when (or especially) when those jobs are off the books.

ProTek Automatic Carbon Composite USMC Dive Series (PT1212)

The thing is, if you make watches for a certain sub-set of professionals that do the job and look good doing it, you’re going to get other people interested, especially when those same characteristics make for a solid overall diving watch. And while the United States Marine Corps likely still want the tactical benefits of quartz, for collectors who simply love the intensely rugged aesthetic of ProTek’s USMC collection, an automatic movement would seal the deal. So, that’s what the brand has done.

The new USMC Automatic collection does what it says on the tin. It has the same gloriously chunky 42mm case in lightweight carbon composite; it has the same ratcheting unidirectional diving bezel with absurdly large grips and the same 300m water resistance, tested for once in water as well as air pressure. In short, it still looks and feels like the kind of Expendables-level hardware a spec ops unit needs.

ProTek’s Pro-Glo illumination system

It even houses ProTek’s signature Pro-Glo illumination system, which we’ve covered previously. For a quick recap though, their watches use tritium gas tubes which glow under their own steam – no need to charge them – for 25 years. Oh and they’re 100x brighter than conventional lume.

The only difference between the previous models and these is that the reliable Japanese quartz movement has been replaced by a reliable Japanese automatic, swapping the Miyota for a Seiko. If you want reliability and accuracy at an accessible level, you shop Japanese and the workhorse Seiko in the new USMC Automatic models is a watchmaking staple for a reason. It’s also one of the most ubiquitous – and therefore easily serviced and repaired – movements around, just in case the worst happens.

ProTek Stainless Steel Automatic 2200 Series

While the use of an automatic means that you will need to sync watches before a mission, it also means you won’t be left high and dry because you forgot to put in a battery – and means that both the superb Pro-Glo Illumination System and the movement are completely autonomous.

Of course, if the USMC watch is a bit too militaristic for you, ProTek has also updated their more style-conscious Series 2200, which offer a steel case and more colourful options for more everyday wear. The ethos is the same, offering a new autonomous movement to collectors put off by quartz, just in a more casual package.

ProTek Automatic Carbon Composite USMC Dive Series (PT1212)

So, what about price? Well, as I mentioned previously, automatic movements are generally more expensive than quartz, often by orders of magnitude. Here, not so much. The previous price for the quartz-equipped USMC Dive model was $495 (approx. £380), which for a watch with a carbon case, unique design ethos and tritium gas tubes is downright insane, regardless of movement. The automatic? That’ll set you back just $200 more.

Pair that uber-accessible price tag with some eye-catching new dials – the red in particular pops like nothing else in ProTek’s range – and you have a new heavy-hitter in sheer value. Yes, anyone taking their watch on a night mission will likely still opt for the original quartz USMC pieces, but for those of us that prefer the long-lasting autonomy and, yes, prestige of an automatic watch, the new collection absolutely nails it.

More details at ProTek Watches.

When thinking about Omologato watches, I ask the question what makes a racing watch? The obvious, technical answer would be a chronograph with a tachymeter, something that made its debut trackside. But thematically there are so many more timepieces that link themselves to motorsport, with a splash of livery here and there. Both of these could be considered ‘racing watches’ at a stretch, but when the link’s that tenuous, should they be? So, would it be too much of a stretch to define a racing watch as a watch that’s, well, associated with actual racing?

With that, I think, very fair definition, you cut through the noise to the core racing watches and while you do indeed still have some big names, Omologato stands out as a serious contender. The reason for that lies solely with the British brand’s founder, Shami Kalra.

Today, Omologato have ties with the racing world that the big Swiss maisons could only dream of, with car lovers and team owners both flocking to his various, accessible collections. But they’re relationships that didn’t come out of nowhere. Prior to Omologato, Shami had been supplying watches to racing teams; the kind of watches that owners would thank their crews with or commemorate victories, that kind of thing. They were special pieces for special moments. So when Shami decided to strike out properly with an own-name dial in 2015, he did so with the wind behind him. Those relationships, those connections have driven Omologato ever since.

Omologato Panamericana

Let’s be frank, Omologato is a watch company and their main business is making and selling watches. That much I’m sure we all agree on. I think we can all agree that they’re also pretty good at it, tying a plethora of retro designs to automotive iconography as broad as a famous car, as niche as a famous corner.

There’s a lot I could say about them – especially their ultra-cool TV-shaped Panamericana – but I won’t, at least not here. Because the bottom line is that anyone can do something similar. I could go and research some obscure racing paraphernalia, hire a designer and get some cheap watches turned around in a month. They wouldn’t be as cool or as interesting, but it would be easy – and completely insincere.

Shami awarding his friend with the Omologato Award

Sincerity. It’s that one word that has, for me at least, really come to set Omologato and Shami apart from even the often very sincere British watch industry. Shami doesn’t just design racing watches; he’s a fixture of the racing industry, full stop.

Shami has made it his self-imposed mandate to help racers and racing teams compete across the spectrum of the sport, from amateur level competitions to professional races like the Indy500. Not Formula 1 of course, there’s more than enough money sloshing about there, but the kinds of races that are built on and defined by passion. To that end, he’s become a bit of a fixer, scoring some free Pirelli tires for one team here, brokering a $22 million private jet there, whatever he can do to help dedicated teams keep the lights on. In short, if you’re on a racing team that’s struggling to keep your fuel tank full, drop Omologato a line.

Omologato 911 from the East African Classic Rally on display at thee Rotunda at The RAC Club in Pall Mall London (2019)

If these kinds of deals end with Omologato on some sleek racing livery then so be it, but that’s not the point. They’re a brand that lives and breathes the sport that’s given them so much inspiration. In 2025 in fact, they’re taking the next logical step along that line of thinking: starting their own Indy500 team.

Most of us wouldn’t know how to go about starting and entering a team into what’s a serious competition. For Shami, it involved a call to racing legend Chip Ganassi to get a (quite eye-watering) price, then a friend who specialised in sponsorship deals to secure said price. And it just kept going. When another racer and close friend of the brand found out #TeamOmologato was happening, he brought in yet more funds to the nascent team, topped off by an engine supplier donating the beating heart of the car.

On the one hand, entering a car at all shows Omologato’s dedication to the sport. On the other, the sheer relative ease with which Shami has pulled it all together proves that his is a brand built on relationships and passion, not light blue and orange colourways. There’s still a way to go before Shami can stand trackside as a proud team owner (and most likely an even longer way to go before a win), but they’re on the right track.

More details at Omologato.

Who we are, how we live our lives and our perceptions of the world around us are heavily influenced by where we come from and the family we grew up with. You might not think about it on a daily basis but the decisions and character of your parents, grandparents or even great grandparents impact even the smallest decisions you make all the time. However, one watch brand that does think about this fact is Nostas, founded by designer Francesco Nostas who channels all he has learnt of his family history into the modern, brutalist design of the Audace collection.

While the watch brand Nostas is thoroughly Italian, the family Nostas has a heritage that spans the globe. Francesco’s father, Hermes, grew up on the other side of the planet in Bolivia, South America, and moved to Italy in 1990. However, he only did so because his father Pietro had moved to Bolivia from Italy in 1945, after the war, where he then married into the Nostas family, who were prominent fabric traders in Santa Cruz.

In the span of just four generations you have multiple examples of people willing to uproot their entire lives and set out across the world to discover their fortunes. And by doing so become newly ingrained in the cultures and lifestyles they discovered there. How then do you express this familial willingness to sacrifice safety and security in order to follow your passions in the form of a wristwatch?

Well, first of all you have ensure that if you decide to suddenly up sticks and head off into the jungles of South America or disappear along the coast of the Mediterranean, your watch can keep up with you. It has be versatile and a natural explorer. Secondly, the design simply cannot be conventional – a plain circular case is not an option – in order to push the edges of your comfort zone.

With all this and more in mind, in 2023 Nostas launched the Audace. A collection that today consists of the standard Audace and the Audace 500 (there was also a limited production GMT edition that has sold out). Each variant has a case heavily influenced by brutalist architecture, bold and imposing. There are few architectural movements that push the boundaries of people’s artistic comfort zones as much as brutalism. The brand is also partners with Roberto Conte, a photographer known for his book “Brutalist Italy”, which documents how brutalism and Italian style go hand in hand and so in a roundabout way brutalism is also part of the Nostas heritage.

In terms of design, the watches are octagonal in shape with large, flat surfaces sitting at sharp angles and prominent facets. In watch design terms we would classify this as a late 1970s, 1980s style of design that was spearheaded by prominent figures such as Gerald Genta. They also have a tapering body that leads into the bracelet giving it an integrated appearance despite being interchangable.

As for being versatile and keeping up with the daring, explorer attitudes of the Nostas family, the Audace couldn’t just look the part, it needs specs to match. The standard Audace has a 200m water resistance rating and is equipped with a reliable Sellita SW200 movement. It’s ready for life on the move.

Pushing the collection even further in the tool watch direction is the Audace 500, a true dive watch interpretation of the piece. It adds a dive timer bezel to the watch and increases the water resistance rating all the way up to 500m, which is seriously impressive for a family business microbrand. This model also houses the Sellita SW200 with 38-hour power reserve, a widely used movement among microbrands and independents.

Nostas really offer a great example in how to take a concept and translate it into a product. However, I think the greatest trick that Nostas have managed to achieve is that you can know absolutely zero of the heritage behind the brand or their reasoning behind certain design features and the Audace is still a great accessible timepiece. The standard edition costs £712 while the Audace 500 is £1,000. I would happily pay that price for a watch with fundamentals as rock solid as this. This is the kind of foundation that can set a brand up for multiple generations and as we’ve seen, that’s what Nostas is all about.

More details at Nostas.

Guilloche is often shorthand for a certain breed of Swiss classical watchmaking, the kind of finishing that sets an entry level timepiece from a masterpiece. The thing is, these days a good enough machine can do most guilloche and it’s getting more common than ever before, especially at the accessible end of the market. Not so enamel, which is why we should pay attention to brands like Ématelier who excel at enamel.

Grand Feu enamel doesn’t just sound extraordinary in a grandiose way, it’s one of the most laborious processes in watchmaking. It starts with a wafer-thin metal disc that’s then painted with impossibly thin layers of enamel powder. It’s only when that powder is fused together when fired at 800 degrees Celsius that it becomes the perfectly smooth, beautifully deep enamel that represents a certain echelon of watchmaking.

Even that however makes it seem a simpler process than it is. Enamelling is a science rather than an art, and even the finest artists might mis-paint a brush stroke. You can’t cover up issues in enamel as easily as canvas though and any imperfection, an almost invisible hairline fracture for example, means tossing a dial out and starting from scratch. That gets incredibly hairy when, every time you want to add a new element or colour to the dial, it needs to be re-fired. You can funnel days of work into a single dial only to have it fall at the final hurdle.

Needless to say, that all means that good grand feu enamel has a bit of a premium. It’s why it’s normally reserved for prestige pieces a la Breguet, Jacquet Droz and Vacheron Constantin. I say normally, because Ématelier’s watches start from only $1,900.

.

Ematelier Sprezzatura Cloisonné Atlas Corona

That might sound too good to be true, but this is what happens when someone specialises this hard into something like enamelling. The Canadian company’s expertise in the field is second-to-none and indeed, their gloriously artistic bespoke dials – which includes gold wire-framed cloisonne enamel. Fancy a preproduced Louvre-worthy masterpiece to crown your aging Cartier? This is the way to go.

Ématelier Sprezzatura Collection

There is a premium of course and it’s a very involved process, in need of a base watch for Ématelier to work with. If what you’re looking for is simpler than that – an accessible timepiece with its own grand feu enamel dials – look no further than the new Sprezzatura collection, featuring the Grand Feu Enamel edition, Two Component Sunken Handmade Grand Feu Enamel Dial, Three Component Double Sunken Handmade Grand Feu Enamel Dial and Cloisonne Handmade Grand Feu Enamel Dial.

Referring to a kind of effortless grace, there’s a sly dichotomy in using the word here. On the one hand, the amount of effort that’s gone into the enamel dial is anything but effortless; on the other, the resulting watch has the kind of casual elegance that epitomises the word. Case in point, this gorgeous red and white number.

Ematelier Sprezzatura Three Component White Red

The Sprezzatura Three Component model has a double sunken dial. As if grand feu enamelling wasn’t hard enough on its pristine surface, this adds a whole new layer of complexity and even more possibility of the dial cracking, due to the combination of components and delicate construction. The central dial is pure, clean white; then there’s the red ring with painstakingly painted numerals before the outer white ring with black minute track. It’s an absolute stunner and the depth of colour is magnificent. Sure, there’s something to be said for applied numerals instead of painted, but when you’re showcasing enamelling there’s only one way to go, and the fired gold enamel mixes well with the bright pop of red.

As we’ve established, Ématelier are an enamel specialist, not necessarily a watchmaker in the truest sense. So, it’s no surprise that the rest of the watch is relatively pared back. The 38.8mm stainless steel case is pebble-smooth and tactile thanks to the gently curving bezel, akin to the kind of immensely wearable numbers from Nomos Glashutte. It more than does the job – something that can also be said of the movement, a customised Soprod number with a 42-hour power reserve. That movement also has an Incabloc shock absorbing system, but honestly, given the dial shocks are one thing you’ll really want to keep this watch away from.

The bottom line is that the rest of the watch has been kept relatively accessible – high quality of course, but not opting for some pricey ETA number or extravagant case finishing – so that Ématelier can offer enamel dials for a downright extraordinary price. There are only one or two other companies offering watches like the Sprezzatura at anywhere near these prices, and none of them do so with as many enamelled elements as this.

It helps matters that the Ématelier Sprezzatura Three Component in red and white is also just a great looking watch. Even without diving deep into the difficulties of enamel, that means a lot.

More details at Ématelier.

If discretion is the greater part of valour, then Bernard Lederer may be among the most chivalrous watchmakers working today. Even if you’re familiar with the auction defining likes of F. P. Journe and Philippe Dufour, there’s a good chance that you’ve not come across the independent watchmaker’s name, let alone his watches. And there’s a good reason for that.

When a major watch house – or fashion company with a serious watch collection, let’s say – has an intense horological concept they want to create, they tend not to do it in-house. Even if they do have their own watchmaking studios (and that’s a big ‘if’), they simply won’t have someone on hand to turn a designer’s mechanical fever dream into reality. That’s why many of them turn to Bernard Lederer, a problem-solving watch designer that, due to the marketing necessity of confidentiality, rarely actually comes to the fore.

It’s perhaps misleading therefore to look at Bernard Lederer’s back catalogue and only take into account the creations with his name on. Consider them just the tip of a very large, very secretive iceberg. But given the magnitude of what Lederer has achieved, you can be sure there’s a lot of hidden ice under the surface.

Lederer Masterpiece Table Clock (1986)

For one, German-born Lederer is a founding member of the AHCI, the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants, an association of the finest independent watch and clockmakers working today. For another, the projects we have seen have been historically magnificent. His Masterpiece table clock in 1986 (a year after the AHCI was founded) included a 1,000-year calendar, gravity escapement and temperature differential like a souped-up Harrison Marine Chronometer you can find in the Greenwich observatory. He even built the giant 1996 clock counting down to Brazil’s 500th anniversary of discovery, designed to survive intense heat, dust and elements less than kind to accurate timekeeping.

Bernard Lederer White Gold Blu MT3 Majestic Tourbillon (2010), image credit: Christie’s

On the wristwatch side, in 2007 he created the MT3 Tourbillon, which consisted of three cage-free (free-range) tourbillons supported by a single bridge. In 2011, he followed-up with the Gagarin tourbillon, an ode to the legendary Russian cosmonaut, which features a counter clockwise-moving flying tourbillon that makes one revolution every 108 minutes – the length of Gagarin’s historic space flight.

So, while he doesn’t necessarily do much that’s visible to the average consumer, when Lederer does work on a project, you know it’s going to be something astounding. What’s perhaps unusual then is that the watchmaker’s true obsession isn’t tourbillons or clocks, but one small yet vital element of a movement: the escapement.

The movement inside the Lederer Central Impulse Chronometers uses Lederer’s revolutionary escapement

First a bit of watchmaking 101. Energy in a watch movement comes from the mainspring, the bit you actually wind. This is then transferred to the balance, the oscillator that breaks up that energy into measurable time. Part of how it does that is the spring that coils and uncoils, but the less spoken about part is the escapement. This consists of a pallet fork, which you can usually see due to its rubies and an escape wheel. As the balance spring oscillates back and forth, it pushes the pallet fork from one side of the escape wheel to the other, allowing the geartrain to move forward, before locking back into place and sending an impulse back to the balance, starting the process again. This movement then feeds into the rest of the watch and you have timekeeping.

That’s very brief and likely to give any watchmakers reading this a migraine, but that’s it in layman’s terms. The escapement is also something that over the past centuries has been relatively untouched. Indeed, Breguet played with the idea as he did with most watchmaking concepts, but the only real advances in the last century came from George Daniels and the Co-Axial escapement that’s now a part of most Omega movements.

Lederer Central Impulse Chronometer Red Gold

Lederer’s story goes that after inheriting his grandfather’s pocket watch, he read a book on the sound patterns of various escapements (the tick-tock of a watch is the rubies of the pallet fork clacking into place), he added a special escapement to his first self-made piece. Since then, he’s stood on the shoulders of giants – specifically the giants Breguet and Daniels – to become the greatest luminary of escapements in the world. Case in point, the Central Impulse Chronometer.

Bernard Lederer’s Central Impulse Chronometer is a magnificent piece of true watchmaking. The actual changes to what I briefly outlined above are enormous and the technicalities are worth an essay in and of themselves. Much as I want to keep you reading these pages, if you’re interested, plenty of digital ink has been spilled on the subject, if you can parse the technicalities.

The newest addition to the CIC range is the Lederer Central Impulse Chronometer 39mm with 18% reduction in the movements thickness, limited to 20 pieces each colourway

The brief summation is that Lederer has combined Breuget’s Natural Escapement, a double-wheel number that was designed to work without oil, and George Daniel’s Independent Double Wheel Escapement. This latter involves having two balance wheels that alternately interact with the escapement. The amount of effort funnelled into marrying the two is mind-blowing – patents and innovations aplenty – but the result is one of the most efficiently running movements ever built. It not only has two balance wheels, but it has two independent barrels, two independent constant-force mechanisms (remontoires) and two independent gear trains!

While, like many an independent watchmaker, Bernard Lederer’s all about the minute mechanics and perfecting chronometric performance, it also can’t go unsaid that the Central Impulse Chronometer is an absolute stunner. There’s something to be said for the twin visible balances on display and the finishing across the rest of the watch is invariably on par – if pared-back in a typically German way – with the finest independent watchmakers out there. It’s gorgeous, understated and necessarily limited (to 20 pieces in the latest version). The fact you can still get them on occasion shows that Bernard Lederer is still not as well-known as he very much should be. Here’s hoping this goes some minute way towards changing that.

More details at Lederer.

There are a few traits that, over the past decade or so, have come to define British watchmaking. Visually, there’s often a penchant for colour, underpinned by a distinctly vintage flair. There’s an emphasis on accessibility, allowing even new collectors to get a cool, automatic watch on their wrists and, finally, a playful design counterpoint to the staider Swiss watchmakers. And if there’s one watchmaker that embodies that reputational trifecta, it’s Farer.

Farer wasn’t started because their founder wanted to recreate their grandfather’s long-lost Rolex or had a driving urge to build a watch that nobody has ever built before. Founder Paul Sweetenham was far more  pragmatic than that. He wanted to create a direct-to- consumer brand, challenging himself to do so as quickly as possible and, having previously worked selling colourful Swatch and TAG Heuer F1 timepieces, saw watches as the place he could do that.

Paul Sweetenham, founder of Farer

That might sound a little unromantic as origin stories go, but I’d argue that it’s simply honest. Very few entrepreneurs start a watch brand unless they think it’ll make money, no matter what they might say in their advertising spiel. I’d also argue that coming to watches from the outside – rather than as a collector – has its benefits. “Our approach is different”, explains Paul. “Everyone says that, obviously, but we’re not watch people coming to design; we’re design people coming to watches.”

In an industry where function is often more important than form, that’s a refreshing twist on the paradigm. Rather than take, say, a dive watch, look at its pure functionality and build out from there, you limit yourself. Instead, Farer takes a design concept they want to achieve and ask, what suits that concept?

Farer launched their brand with two quartz watches; Bernato and Carter GMT (2015)

Initially it was an idea funnelled, like many a fledgling watch brand, into quartz pieces. It makes sense. Quartz is cheaper than mechanical so, if you’re looking for a proof of concept, that’s the best way to go – and Farer’s in good, British company in that regard, too. So, while they were uninspired mechanically, those initial pieces, launched in 2015, needed to be eye-catching. And they were, utilising flashes of bold colours against white and black dials. There was a lot going on and it all worked flawlessly.

The quirky, colourful take on halcyon watch design preceded the wave of vintage flavours that followed them. In context, Baltic, who are often credited with pushing that archival wave in the independent space, was founded a year later. Thanks to their quartz movements, that level of colourful fun was also incredibly accessible, showcasing an emphasis on value for money that would become part of Farer’s core ethos.

Farer Hopewell, part of Farer’s first collection of automatic watches (2016)

Like we always say however, one watch does not a brand make, a message that was explained to Paul in no uncertain terms. “When we were thinking about starting Farer, my friend at Roventa Henex took me down into their basement – nerve-racking from a Swiss ex-military man. He took me to cabinets full of files and when I asked what they were, he told me, ‘all the brands that built one watch with us and disappeared’. I was determined we wouldn’t be one of them.”

It was a year later, in 2016, that Farer moved to automatic with the elegant Hopewell, Beagle, and Endurance automatic, three-hand watches. In blues and whites with hints of bright red and green, they were full of what would become Farer character, particularly as all three had very different dials, rather than a simple palette swap.

Farer Lander Kano GMT 36mm (2023), based on the brand’s earliest automatic watches, the Lander (2017)

Today, that’s one thing you can always bank on Farer for. When they release a new timepiece, it’s always more than a simple change of colour here and there. Each dial variation has a completely different character, something that comes directly from their unique mix of design sensibilities and practicalities.

“We take colourways and design elements from everywhere but the watch industry”, explains Paul. “We’ll look at old car catalogues and colour charts to get inspiration, mixing them with halcyon design elements we love – an index or numeral here, a handset there – to create three different watches, not just three versions of one watch. Those differences also mean that we often have guys that buy two or three from each collection.”

Farer Moonphase Burbidge (2023)

For some brands, one person buying two or three of your new release might seem fantastical, but Farer have found it par for the course these days. Their capsule drops regularly sell out in weeks at most, and the appeal is obvious. Not only are the designs different enough that each feels like a completely different watch, but each is more competitively priced.

Farer’s initial vision of a direct-to-consumer brand wasn’t because they disliked retailers, but because it meant they could offer more value to the people buying their watches. That was first done with quartz, then with ETA automatics and now it’s done with Sellita movements and a never-say-no approach to design that is, I’m sure, a frustration to many of their Swiss suppliers.

Farer Banzare GMT (2024)

“When we wanted to do purple lacquer, we were told just to give up and use clear lacquer over a purple dial,” says Paul of the regal Banzare limited edition. “We spoke to supplier after supplier who told us just to go with what everyone else did. But we didn’t want to do what everyone else did and we didn’t take no for an answer.”

Indeed, in many ways Farer are running counterculture to the wider watch industry – and I don’t just mean in terms of design. Transparency is a bit of a buzzword among independent brands, but few are as outspoken about the concept as Farer. They will happily tell you not just who makes their movements, but their cases, dials, straps, hands and lume. In an industry legendary for its obfuscation (to the point where in-house has lost a lot of meaning), that’s a refreshing take, and ties in nicely to Farer’s fairer pricing.

Farer Monopusher GMT Seagrave

Just take a look at their latest release, the Monopusher GMT. On paper, some collectors might balk at paying nearly £2,000 for a Sellita movement. That alone is a little bit painful when you examine just how solid Sellita movements are compared to even ETA, but in this case it’s a travesty. A chronograph GMT is a rare but immensely useful combination, and Sellita’s version is truly exceptional.

You might also notice that the dial has two variations that go beyond even Farer’s usual range of designs. One has bi-compax subdials at 12 and nine; one has those dials at 12 and six. That might seem like a small difference, but it means altering the architecture of the movement. One of the layouts involves more components and more jewels to make it work – but I’m not going to tell you which one. Like sizes, it should be a matter of taste rather than price as to which you prefer, hence both versions being priced exactly the same.

Farer Monopusher GMT Cobb

This way of playing with the movement’s very architecture illustrates Farer’s dedication to offering something different and something of genuine value. Sure, they bring people into the fold with funky designs you won’t find elsewhere, but while they may start from a design-led drawing board, there’s plenty of substance under the surface. In short, come for the colours, stay for the chronometry.

More details at Farer.

It’s a well-established fact that fashion trends are cyclical; it’s why parts of your wardrobe that were out of date 20 years back are suddenly in vogue. And while the watch industry moves much, much slower than the catwalk, it’s not immune to the vagaries of time. Trends may change at a glacial pace, but they’re still there and as the old guard of 60s divers followed by 70s sports watches give way it’s time to head back to the 90s. I’m so very sorry.

Unlike other era-specific watch trends, I was actually alive during the 90s. Only just, but I’ll take it. I remember listening to Nirvana on my way to see The Matrix smashing a packet of Nerds – which is odd as I’m pretty sure I was on my way to Space Jam and listening to the Spice Girls. I still to this day wake up at night haunted by the imagined theme tune to Pinky and the Brain.

Bulgari Roma quartz (1975)

However, while pop culture may have hit a low point, watchmaking was in its ascendency. Whereas the much-documented quartz crisis of the 70s forced terrifying numbers of watchmakers to shutter their manufactures, the 90s was when the industry started to heal the damage. Swatch Group was buying up prestige brands, Patek was releasing insanely complicated calibres and there was an optimism to watches in general.

It was the kind of optimism I think we need a little more of these days. This was the era that Swatch really hit its stride with their funky, semi-disposable pieces. G-SHOCK were colourfully killing it with the Baby-G and Ikepod were building UFO-shaped watches aplenty. Sure, there were serious brands making serious things – A. Lange & Sohne comes to mind – but there was a sense of fun in unexpected combinations of colours and shapes. There was a willingness to try new, outlandish things, like an insanely high-end luxury jeweller leveraging aluminium and rubber to build an iconic watch.

Bulgari Diagono (circa 1988), image credit: Catawiki

I am of course talking about the Bulgari Aluminium, but before we get there it’s worth knowing that the Aluminium didn’t come out of nowhere. In 1988, the Italian-Swiss brand introduced the Diagono, their first foray into sports watches. They’d been releasing timepieces since the 1920s, including the Serpenti of the 1940s and the first Bulgari Roma of 1975, with its now famous brand-printed bezel. But these were meant to compliment their jewellery rather than appeal to a completely new audiences, so when the Diagono appeared with its integrated strap and quartz chronograph movement, it was a dramatic shift to the prestige level Bulgari had been working at. It was, dare I say, accessible.

Bulgari Diagono Professional Scuba SD 42 (circa 2000s)

In 1994 they launched the Diagono Scuba which, as the name suggests, was a diving variant of the watch that came with a COSC-certified movement this time and 200m water resistance. More importantly for our little biography, it came with a unique rubber strap that used big, bracelet-like links to join case and strap. These allowed the watch to lie flat against the wrist and avoid the springiness of the usual diving-appropriate rubber numbers.

Original Bulgari Aluminium Advert (1998)

Finally in 1998, Bulgari released their sports watch in its final form: the Bulgari Aluminium. The Bulgari name punched into the rubber bezel was taken directly from the original Diagono (and therefore the Roma of the 70s); the odd, rubber-coated trapezoidal links either side of the strap were taken from the Diagono Scuba and in its own twist, it introduced lightweight aluminium to the mix.

Style wise, it wasn’t just a throwback to Bulgari’s own watchmaking heritage, but the sports watches of two decades prior. The integrated strap, the industrial look, the whole thing felt like an accessible homage to the Genta era. In the 2020s, I’ve read similar sentiments in too many press releases from terrible Kickstarter brands to not roll my eyes, but back then it was just cool.

Bulgari Aluminium advertised on a Alitalia Boeing 747 (1998)

It’s hard to overstate how left-field the Aluminium was. It made sense from a product point of view of course. Aluminium is super lightweight and much more accessible than titanium. But at a time when the watch industry had only just started to be seen as a luxury purchase, Bulgari heading the other way was audacious at best, a gamble at worst.

We’re still talking about it, so it’s obviously a gamble that paid off. Sure, it helped that Bulgari plastered it across the side of 747 planes (back when Boeing were less terrifying) under the tagline, ‘Bulgari Aluminium Flies with Alitalia, but even under its own merits the Aluminium became an instant jet-set icon. Perhaps it was the innate fun of the watch. Perhaps it was the sleek, high-contrast aesthetics. It might even be that in the 90s we all loved a bit of branded – and the bezel, links and dial of the Aluminium were all VERY branded.

Bulgari Aluminium (2020)

It was successful enough that, after ending the Aluminium run back in …, Bulgari brought the collection back in 2020, with new automatic movements rather than the accessible quartz of the original generation. Again, it was a surprise given that at the same time the brand was showcasing their thinline watchmaking through the record-breaking Finissimo line. And yet once again it was the perfect time to bring it back, a time where collectors were looking for value and cool factor as much as classical prestige. It’s no coincidence that with the accessible microbrands, Bulgari’s uber-accessible slice of fun made a comeback – and it did so with a GPHG win right out of the gate.

That comeback was faithful to the original aesthetically, superior mechanically and has since spawned an ever-growing collection of fun pieces across time-only watches, chronographs and GMTs. Case in point, the trio of new releases for 2024.

Bulgari Aluminium GMT

The first is the most straightforward. The Aluminium Black GMT is pretty much a retread of the debut design codes of 1998, with black, white and red. With a crisp white dial and black bezel and strap, it’s high contrast and jet-set enough that you could easily see it on the side of an aircraft. An Airbus, maybe. The 24-hour ring is mildly coke flavoured with it’s split between black for the night hours, red for the day. It’s similar to the previous blue version, but much more eye-catching. It’s also the same price at the older model at £3,540.

Second, we have the time only version which takes a clean, minimalist approach. The whole watch, Bulgari-stamped bezel included, is white, with just hints of red either end of the second hand. It looks and feels light and while it certainly veers more feminine, it’s nonetheless a seriously cool watch if you can get away with it, limited to 1,000 pieces and priced to move at £2,980.

Bulgari Aluminium Smeraldo

Finally, we have the highlight of the new drop – and in my opinion, the modern Aluminium collection as a whole – the Smeraldo. It’s not hard to guess why I like this one. The gorgeous mediterranean green of the dial goes from emerald at the bottom to white at the top, a fun take on a fume gradient. The chronograph subdials, rubber bezel and strap are in a darker, forest green which tones down the brighter dial colour nicely and marks it out from the rest of the Aluminium collection.

At £4,750, the Smeraldo is perhaps not as accessible as you might want from the collection as a whole, and it’s still a limited edition at 1,000 pieces, but it’s still a perfect summer watch. And there’s no denying it’s a fresh new look for the Aluminium, a watch that itself still feels as fresh and new as back in those halcyon days of 1998. At the very least, it’s aged a hell of a lot better than me.

More details at Bulgari.

When it comes down to it, one of the main appeals of mechanical wristwatches is the way they make us feel. Aesthetics that are pleasing to the eye, mechanisms that are intellectually exciting, and dare I say even something spiritual or emotional in the way that they take the intangible concept of time and render it in a tactile object. There’s a romance in creating a connection between yourself and the natural flow of the world. And I would argue that that connection is at its strongest with a bespoke watch that you have created yourself – perhaps with a little help from a brand such as Sartory Billard.

Sartory Billard first emerged onto the watchmaking scene in 2015 when Armand Billard sold his design agency and stepped into the world of horology with no prior experience. Quite the impressive leap of faith. He brought with him the belief that with the right support, anyone can have that one idea that puts them in the designer’s seat. Naturally, that meant helping clients create bespoke watches.

SB04

After the initial experiments of the SB01, SB02 and SB03 models, Sartory Billard really hit its stride in 2020 with the launch of the SB04. Not only was the launch of the SB04 well timed for the watch industry boom of 2020-2022 (especially in terms of independents), but it offered customers something truly invaluable: a blank canvas. With a traditional round design and time only complications, the margin for self-expression and creativity is truly massive.

It’s all well and good saying that a watch allows for creativity but what does that actually mean in practice? Well, let’s take a look at the design process. First, a customer submits an initial request via the portal on the website, where they specify the model they’d like to produce, such as the SB04, At which point, you’ll have a consultation about the design you’d like to make.

SB04 with meteorite dial

Elements that can be customised include the dial material, the dial colour, the numbers and index design, the hand finishing, the case finishing and the strap. But we’re not talking about customisation limited to a red dial vs a blue dial. The possibilities are near limitless. Looking through the portfolio of existing SB04 watches there are meteorite dials, engravings of cities, miniature portraits, natural gemstone, handmade guilloché, aventurine glass, circular graining and sunray brushing. And that’s in combination with Arabic numerals, Eastern Arabic numerals, Chinese numerals, dive watch style indexes, bar indexes, and designs with no indexes at all.

SB05

Plus, that’s before you even consider that there are multiple models you can choose to base the watch on. There’s the SB04 as already mentioned with its time only display. Then there’s the GPHG nominated SB05 with small seconds, the SB06 flying tourbillon. The  SB07 integrated bracelet and the SB08 jumping hours and minutes with tourbillon. And even within those there are choices such as case size, material and display options such as the SB06 being 12-hour or 24-hour.

SB06

On a technical level, the watches impress too. After going through all the effort of creating a custom dial and case, it would be a major disservice to skimp on the movement. The time-only editions house movements from La Joux-Perret, one of the most reputable third- party suppliers in the world, while the more complex  ones feature movements created specifically for Sartory Billard by industry leading watchmakers.

Armand Billard

In terms of pricing, it’s not a one price fits all situation due to the huge variety of custom elements. As a rule, they ask for a deposit once the design of the watch is agreed upon and then final payment is to be made prior to shipment. For example, the SB04 has a deposit of €2,500 and an average budget of €3,600. That then increases to €8,000 deposit for the SB05 with an average budget of €9,250 and all the way up to around €96,000 for the SB06-24. On top of that, as Armand personally works on every single watch and is just one human, there is an extremely limited production quota per year. But that’s the price for a watch you will have a connection to for the rest of your life.

More details at Sartory Billard.

In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. After being selected from over 400 applicants to leave the atmosphere aboard the Vostok 6 mission, she represented a milestone for women across the world. And yet, while Tereshkova actually made it into space, halfway across the world, the other side of the Iron Curtain, aviator Jerrie Cobb was doing her best to do the same at NASA.

Cobb was no stranger to the air. After her first flight at age 12 (this was in the 1950s so don’t assume it was a comfortable ride) she made a career out of flying military aircraft around the world. In 1959 she became a test pilot for Rockwell International, setting the then record for altitude at 37,010 feet during the development of the Aero Commander. Having broken speed and distance records too, she was an aviation pioneer. So, when the fantastically named Dr. William Randolph “Randy” Lovelace II was looking for women to undertake the same testing regiment as NASA’s nascent astronauts, she was the obvious choice as his first recruit.

Pioneering female pilot Jerrie Cobb next to a Mercury 13 capsule.

In 1960, Cobb passed the tests, proving that she could handle the necessary forces to make it out of the atmosphere. Not only that, but she recruited tens of other pilots to take the tests, which in total 13 women passed. They were dubbed the Mercury 13. Unfortunately, the project came to an abrupt halt. It was a crushing loss, and while Tereshkova’s flight proved once and for all what Cobb knew – that women were just as suited to space flight as men – it also compounded the idea that the Mercury 13 would never get there themselves.

Instead of lingering on the disappointment however, Cobb immediately took to the skies again, this time in South America, carrying medicine to the indigenous people of the Amazon. She did so in an Aero Commander 500B (fitting given her early involvement with the model line) dubbed ‘Juliet’, before upgrading a few years later to a Britten-Norman BN-2A Islander, which was perfectly suited to the muddy, rugged landscape where an airstrip was a luxury.

Having set the record for altitude during the development of the Aero Commander, passed NASA’s astronaut test, flown medicine to the Amazon, and fought discrimination to become an aeronautical pioneer, Jerrie Cobb (above) can now add a Riley watch created in her honour to her list of achievements.

This was flight at its most pioneering since aviation’s earliest days. Maps were never a given and journeys required meticulous planning, where one wrong move would mean being stranded alone. It’s mildly terrifying and documented in her autobiography Jerrie Cobb: Solo Pilot. It’s one hell of a ride.

So, why does Jerrie Cobb matter? Well, for one thing her legacy of promoting equality is one that even today more people should take note of. She was fighting discrimination before it was even illegal and combined with her aeronautical achievements mean she should, by rights, be a household name. She also happens to be the inspiration behind the latest collection from Riley watches.

Having already paid tribute to the giants of aviation that are Howard Huges and Amelia Earhart, Riley’s third member of their pioneering triumvirate is the Cobb, a handsome, cushion cased tribute to Jerrie’s groundbreaking (and leaving) career.

First off, the case. With its smooth curves and shallow angles, the 38mm stainless steel piece is both a nod to space race engineering and, perhaps more importantly, a healthy dose of 1970s-slanted charm. The Mercury 13 may have been early ‘60s, but as we’ve already gone over, Cobb was active well into the ‘70s and beyond. That’s amped up with a retro dial comprised of a semi-transparent central dial, hour ring with faceted indexes and an outer minute track.

The dial layout has been given a solid number of colour combinations, pairing different central dials with complementary hour tracks. The combinations range from a classic mix of silver and grey with gold indexes to a bright red and rusty brown number, with a blue inner bezel.

If you’re after something with that great retro flavour however, there’s also a gorgeous chocolate brown version that’s hard not to think of as sepia-toned. Paired with the cushion case, the Cobb looks much more expensive than its price tag of just £129.

With a price like that, you might assume that there’s a quartz movement in here. The Howard Hughes used a meca-quartz, so it wouldn’t be out of character for the uber-accessible brand. But there’s that one little word on the dial: solar. That’s because the Cobb uses a quartz regulated movement powered by the sun (hence the semi-transparent central dials you may have noticed), something that the astronaut-trained pilot would likely appreciate.

At its core however, the Cobb isn’t just a handsome, affordable watch with lashings of ‘70s style. It is all those things of course, but it’s also a spotlight on a story that doesn’t get told enough. Cobb was an incredibly important figure in aviation and, while she’s not often mentioned in the same breath as Howard Hughes and Amelia Earhart, she should be.

More details at Riley Watch Co..

The watch industry is often a place where dreams and desires crash into the brick wall of reality. Yes, that Vacheron Constantin is lovely, but it also has a six-figure price tag. Yes, that Rolex is awesome, but it has a multi-year waiting list. One brand determined to combat these blockades of exclusivity is Oceaneva, who on their five-year anniversary are as committed to producing high quality, affordable watches as they were when they started this journey in 2019.

Taking us back to 2019 and the founding of Oceaneva, the brand started in the same manner as many microbrands. After 13 years in grey market watch sales and seeing first-hand the frustrations of customers, the founder wanted to show that it was possible to create watches in a customer-friendly way. With professional level specs, solid mechanical movements and very little mark up.

Oceaneva Deep Marine Explorer III 3000M, £439

After taking inspiration from a local statue of Neptune in Virginia, USA, for the logo and combining the words ocean and Geneva (the traditional home of watchmaking) to create the name Oceaneva, a new brand was created. Of course, a watch brand needs watches and after a sell-out debut timepiece, they’ve gone only from strength to strength.

Jumping forward a few years, Oceaneva released what has become one of their signature timepieces, the Deep Marine Explorer III. A 42mm steel dive watch housing the well respected Sellita SW 200-1 automatic movement with a mind boggling 3000m water resistance rating.

Oceaneva GMT Titanium Automatic 1250M

What’s more, instead of relying on lab tests, they actually strapped the watch to the outside of a submersible vehicle and sent it into the deep. They’re the first USA watch brand to undertake this type of real-world testing, which is something you typically only hear from prestige brands like Rolex and Omega.

Oceaneva Deep Marine Explorer II, £399

With watches like the Deep Marine Explorer II in 2023, they were also at the forefront of the titanium watch trend that would come to dominate the latter half of the year and which has continued to today, embracing the high-tech material with its lightweight properties and high strength while also making it accessible. When I say accessible, I’m talking about a 1,250m titanium watch with mechanical movement for £419. The value is incredible.

Oceaneva GMT Deep Marine Explorer 1250M, £183

The other signature element of Oceaneva watches, beyond their technical execution, is the sheer range of colours and variants available for each watch. Most of their references have a dozen or more colourways ranging from classic styles to more Avant Garde combinations with a healthy mixture of finishes and designs.

At time of writing, Oceaneva has seven core collections, meaning there are around 90 different watches available – while they may have started life similarly to a microbrand, it’s clear that on Oceaneva’s five-year anniversary they have quickly outstripped that label.

Oceaneva Deep Marine Explorer II 1250M, £399

What about the next five years? According to the founder, “we plan to continue designing new products to meet the ongoing demand. Over the past five years, we’ve sold thousands of pieces and received several buyout offers from industry companies. However, I’m not interested in retiring yet. At 46, I still have a lot of ideas and am enjoying building the brand.” As to those new designs, the future holds more than dive watches, “we’re considering expanding our line to include a hand-wind dress watch towards the end of this year.”

More details at Oceaneva.

A name says a lot about a watchmaker. Vacheron Constantin has the ring of historical pedigree; Urwerk the hint of an engineering degree. Some require a little digging to get to the core of what their name means, some wear it written large on their sleeve. When that name is ‘Horological Tools Department’, it’s not hard to figure out which category they fall into. It’s a label more self-explanatory than any tin of wood stain.

Despite a name that epitomises a very British approach to utilitarianism, HTD was actually born in Florence, a city with plenty of watchmaking heritage in a very specific breed of tool watches. Cushion-cased ones, obviously. But rather than the military slant associated with the biggest Italian watch names, HTD’s initial focus was cars.

HTD founders Federico Del Guerra (bottom) and Federico Zulian (left) / Hesagraph Jungle

It wasn’t an idle direction. When the founders Federico – Federico Del Guerra and Federico Zulian – met at university, they had an inkling that they’d like to pursue watches, which was only the start. When they met watchmaker Renzo and mechanic (an ex-bike racer) Piero, they found precisely what they wanted to do. On the one hand, the miniscule tolerances inherent in fine watchmaking; on the other, the smell of oil and engine ingenuity of motoring. It helped of course that Renzo and Piero had shops right next to each other. It’s like it was meant to be.

The first result of this partnership was the Hesagraph, a collection paying loving tribute to the 50s and 60s, the golden era of daredevil racing. It was designed as an ode to Steve McQueen and, while the man had his own, now-famous taste in watches – particularly square models – it’s not hard to see that mix of retro cool and performance in HTD’s debut.

HTD Hesagraph Dollarone

Rugged and stripped back in the same way as a vintage racer with every unnecessary element stripped right out, the bixcompax chronograph nonetheless has a certain charm to it in that pared-back, less-is-more way. Inside is the manual-wind Seagull ST1901, a Chinese-made movement true, but a solid one that easily outpaces its price tag in performance. It also, and this is important, meant that the initial Hesagraph collection was immensely affordable.

Not that it was easy to get though. That initial batch of HTD watches was incredibly limited and ever since the watch brand has continued to only release strict runs of their watches. For serious collectors, even ones dabbling in the sub-£500 realm, that’s nothing but a benefit. It not only means that you won’t see HTD watches everywhere, but it gives the brand freedom to create a ton of different designs. More variety is always better.

HTD Aquatic

For HTD, that’s meant expanding beyond the Hesagraph. Leveraging that same balance of tool watch practicality and pared-back, retro style, they’ve built a more overtly vintage chronograph with a genuine 1980s plexiglass (the Safarigraph) and a run of fun dive watches known as the Aquatic. Neither is particularly unexpected in a tool watch focused brand, but certainly appreciated. However, HTD’s next realm of exploration is a little more unusual: Tennis.

HTD Tennis Chic

Tennis as a sport is dominated by sponsorships, but there are very, very few watchmakers actually taking inspiration from the sport to create their watches, and while the HTD Tennis isn’t specifically designed to be worn while playing, it still pays loving tribute.

At 37mm across, it falls into the same catchment area as the Rolex Oyster Perpetual, Omega Aqua Terra and the reams of likeminded makers building small, simple, colourful timepieces in the same vein. That kind of colour is here to, with the triplets in blue, green and bright orange. And yet despite being similar on paper, there’s no mistaking the HTD Tennis from the crowd. To amp up the theme, the three o’clock, six o’clock and nine o’clock markers have been replaced with miniature white tennis balls with the words ‘fifteen’, ‘thirty’ and ‘fourty’ written around them respectively.

HTD Tennis Sport Cemento Blue and Erba

At first you might assume they’re doubling as minute counters, but then what’s up with fourty? Instead, it points to the three scores before winning a game (assuming you don’t both end up on deuce). Visually, it’s a fun nod to the sport that not only adds some additional flavour to the brightly coloured dials, but helps set the HTD Tennis apart. As, indeed, does the price.

In keeping with their debut racing chronograph, the Tennis is temptingly affordable at €690, approximately £600. It’s backed by a Miyota movement – specifically a premium version of the automatic calibre 9039 with 42-hour power reserve – meaning it’s perfectly reliable and will wind with every forehand, if you do insist on wearing it while playing. We wouldn’t blame you. The flipside of course is that, like every HTD release, it’s limited in production (rather than an actual limited edition). So, you might want to be quick if you fancy snapping up what might just make the perfect Wimbledon wearer.

More details at HTD.

There are some watchmakers you just know go back to the early days of horology. You know the type, those with a penchant for ornate guilloche and perpetual calendars, maybe a cheeky minute repeater here and there. And yet some of the most important names in the field aren’t the ones that hold on to that centuries-old legacy of hand-crafted fine timepieces. In fact, you could argue the opposite. We’re talking about names like Rado, the ‘Master of Materials’ and here’s a look at their history.

The watch industry at large is one that doesn’t change often – more in incremental nudges than seismic shifts – but it does change and Rado has, since 1917, been a vital part of that change. Yes, Rado. From an outside perspective, they might seem like an odd brand to have very directly shaped certain aspects of watchmaking but in a very real sense, their mission statement has pushed design and materials further than other brands would have. That mission statement? “If we can imagine it, we can make it. And if we can make it, will!”

Rado was officially launched in 1950, but the company was initially founded in 1917, in Lengnau.

It’s a very Swiss statement of course and one that’s not exactly humble. It’s basically saying, ‘we can do anything’, but in 1917, Rado – or the manufacturer that would become Rado –  was a very different animal. Founded by the brothers Fritz, Ernst and Werner Schlup (feel free to say it a few times to get it out of your system now), who converted their parent’s home into an atelier in the Swiss village of Lengnau. If you can’t wait for your kids to move out, imagine how the Schlups felt.

The earliest known advert featuring the Rado name (1929).

Rather than your waster of a son just waiting to make it big on YouTube however, the brothers actually had a knack for business. Perhaps it was the team effort, perhaps it was growing military demand, perhaps it was their innate Swiss quality, but the Schlup’s manufacturer grew at a staggering rate until, by the end of World War II, they were among the largest in the country. This of course meant it was time to capitalise on that success with a name: Rado.

Rado Diastar adverts from the 1960s

This is about the time their famous motto came in and honestly, by this point the brothers Schlup had earned it. Not only did they have their new brand – Esperanto for ‘wheel’, in case you were wondering – but they had their first watch to go with it, the Rado Golden Horse, swiftly followed by the Green Horse, both of which had the now iconic moving anchor logo and ‘sign of life’ indicator.

The horses did well, thanks to a combination of solid design and promotion of their water resistance, but the real lightbulb moment came a little later with one of the most influential watches of the 1960s, the Rado DiaStar 1.

The original Rado DiaStar from 1962

The 1962 release was everything other watches were not. It pioneered a hard metal case designed to put the middle finger up to any potential scratch risks. That alone was a seriously impressive leap forwards when basic steel and gold were the only otherwise visible options, but it was combined with a rounded design that looks futuristic, even today. Indeed, while the Captain Cook might be Rado’s most famous reference today (a watch that was, incidentally, released the same year), the DiaStar was the genuine innovation that established the watchmaker’s reputation as the ‘Master of Materials’.

It is worth going into precisely what that hard metal case is. Often the Diastar is cited as being the first ceramic watch. Sorry, I should say incorrectly cited. The material in question was actually tungsten carbide, a ceramic/metal alloy. The ‘pure’ ceramic we mostly see today is zirconium oxide and is a different thing entirely. The first for that would have been IWC’s Da Vinci, over 20 years later. Indeed, tungsten carbide is still a cutting-edge material today; it’s the only reason Bulgari can create a 1.7mm watch that actually works. There’s an argument (a small one, but still) that they wouldn’t have gotten there without Rado.

Rado Anatom (1983)

Over the next decade, Rado doubled down on two things: diving watches with the ever-expanding Captain Cook, and unique shapes that would give Cartier a run for their substantial money. Collections like the 1975 Elegance and ‘76 Glissière were sharp, angular and had that same retro-futurism as the Diastar – including dabbling in the at-the-time innovation of quartz.

The modern Rado Anatom 40th Anniversary

Speaking of quartz, it was at the end of the ‘70s, beginning of the ‘80s that the quartz crisis hit the watch industry. Hard. Manufacturers were shuttered as they just couldn’t compete with the uber-accurate, battery-powered movements ushered in by Seiko and others. Rado on the other hand, were doing relatively well, especially when, in 1983, they launched the Anatom.

The Anatom not only had a name befitting the atomic age, but its cylindrical sapphire crystal was the first of its kind. It was smooth, curved and fit itself to the wrist more comfortably than anything that had come before. ‘Ergonomics’ were less of a thing in the ‘80s than they are now, except when it came to the Anatom.

Andy Warhol Rado Painting on display in the Halcyon Gallery (1987)

It was a success, and you don’t need to take my word for it: legendary pop artist and watch aficionado Andy Warhol (whose collection included fabulously shaped Cartiers and Piagets) dedicated a 1×1 metre painting to the Rado. It was one of the last works he ever produced.

Rado’s distinctive high-tech ceramic cases before being sent to assembly and control.

So, shape was very much Rado’s area of expertise, but this is the ‘Master of Materials’ and, other than a funky sapphire, they’d not pushed too hard in that direction. That’s why 1986 saw the Integral and its use of high-tech ceramic. Unlike the DiaStar, this was true ceramic and while IWC beat them to the punch, the Integral was much more accessible and much more in-keeping with the minimalist aesthetic that would come to define later era Rado.

There were other materials toyed with, too. 2002’s Rado V10K was made from a form of diamond, with a hardness of 10,000 Vickers (hence the name) and 2011’s R5.5 was offered in Ceramos, a more advanced combination of metal and ceramic. The modern era of Rado however really kicked off with the introduction of colour in the True Thinline Collection, designed in association with Le Corbusier. That and, of course, the reintroduction of the Captain Cook.

Rado Captain Cook High-Tech Ceramic x England Cricket

Which brings us to Rado’s latest release and our cover star for this issue: the Captain Cook High-Tech Ceramic x England Cricket. The name says it all, really. It’s a Captain Cook, so you have serious dive watch credentials; it’s in high-tech ceramic, so it’s hard as nails and much more scratch resistant, and it’s a tribute to the England Cricket team.

In-keeping with latter-day Rado’s penchant for colour, that means a handsome combination of blue ceramic case and white ceramic bezel. While I doubt any players particularly want to take to the field with a dive watch on their wrists, they most definitely could.

Coloured ceramic isn’t just hard; it’s hard to produce. There’s a reason it took until now for it to become a ‘thing’, instead of just black or white. As ceramic maestros don’t really know the final colour before the material is fired and potentially wasted, there’s a lot of going back to the drawing board. Being able to perfectly match it to the Cricket uniform is no mean feat.

Inside is the latest generation Rado movement, the R808 automatic with an 80-hour power reserve, backing the 43mm wide, hard outer case with chronometric performance that you might actually want to see through the sapphire dial. It’s one of the best encapsulations of what modern Rado watch is: cool, colourful and ceramic. Though with 150 of them available and a worryingly good price tag of £4,200, you might only see these on the England team’s wrists.

More details at Rado.

Despite what The Great might tell you – it’s a fantastic show but it’s ‘occasionally true’ tagline is flattering at best – Peter the Great did a lot to modernise Russia. He brought in countless reforms to transform what was a backwards country compared to the rest of ‘enlightened’ Europe into a contemporary powerhouse. But it wasn’t all about updating laws and promoting science and culture; he also had an eye for trade – which would eventually lead to the creation of Raketa watches.

Part of that of course was making something that could be traded. This was back in the early 1700s, so options were fairly limited. You needed something that took a specialist level of skill and expertise to create. And so, the Imperial Peterhof Factory was established in 1721, a stone workshop dedicated to decorative stone objects – a factory that would help Peter the Great build his shining new stone-built capital of St. Petersburg. Yes, he had a thing for his own name.

Portrait of Peter the Great and the Great Imperial Crown of Russia which used diamonds cut by the Peterhof Factory

Working with hardstone naturally lends itself to gem-cutting and in 1782, the Imperial Peterhof Factory cut the diamonds for the Great Imperial Crown, establishing themselves as one of the most prestigious luxury manufacturers in Europe – precisely what Peter the Great intended. And by the late 1800s, there was one object of value taking the continent by storm: watches.

To get in on the act, the Imperial Peterhof Factory started working with watchmaker Tablerg and, in the first half of the 20th century, specialised in creating precision rubies specifically for horology. During World War II under the Soviet Union, this translated to precision military equipment and, later, the Kremlin-ordered watch brand Pobeda.

Probeda, the first watch in space

Among the various missions that Pobeda was involved in was Yuri Gagarin’s legendary flight as he escaped the Earth’s atmosphere aboard the Vostok 1. It was a momentous milestone for not just Russia and the Space Race, but mankind – arguably more-so than the first Lunar landing. Needless to say there was an outpouring of national pride, including the factory behind Pobeda, who were proud enough of the achievement to launch a new brand, Raketa – the Russian word for Rocket.

Over the following decades, Raketa continued producing watches for Soviet endeavours, from polar exploration to the Soviet Olympic Games; enough that you can find their pieces peppering vintage watch shops across the world. They’re solidly made pieces that are a world away from your classic Swiss watches. But just like the Peterhof factory before it, Raketa eventually needed to modernise and did so in 2011, producing the first Russian automatic movement of the 21st century in 2014’s Raketa-Avtomat, and flexing those newfound muscles in 2015 with the world’s largest mechanical watch movement.

Raketa “Sonar” 0317, a submariner’s watch

In 2021, Raketa celebrated 300 years of Russian craft heritage since their initial founding by Peter the Great, and they’ve come a long way. Hell, they’ve even evolved from the Soviet-era brutalist designs that we’ve come to expect from Russian watches and these days make everything, from movement to screws, under one roof. Not that they’ve entirely left their Russian heritage behind, of course.

In fact, the main sources of inspiration for modern-day Raketa are the same heroic endeavours that Raketa of the past would have built watches for: space exploration, underwater engineering, polar expeditions, the lot. And part of that is their signature 24-hour movement, designed to keep time in environments that likely require vitamin D supplements. That’s particularly evident in the exceptional Sonar, a watch designed for use aboard submarines, and features a cool mix of blue and red highlights to divide up shifts for the submariners themselves

Raketa “Russian Code” 0302

More recently however, Raketa have entered a new era of watchmaking, one where design is as important as functionality. The “Russian Code” 0302 is a stunner, one that’ll have you doing a double-take as it runs counter-clockwise. The idea is to better imitate the movement of the planets around the sun, but combined with the constellation-laden dial and sleek lines, it’s a world (or three) away from a tool watch, finished exceptionally right down to the red-ringed second hand.

So, while Raketa draws from a unique combination of centuries-old craftsmanship and Soviet-era utilitarianism, the modern brand is very much its own thing. Still, if you had to define them – something that we’re always hesitant to do – it would actually be quite simple: Russian watchmaking at its best.

More details at Raketa.

If I said ‘Italian watch brand’, the first name that came to mind would undoubtedly be Panerai, rather than Venezianico. The grand old watchmaker has been producing their distinctive, oversized military pieces since before World War II, and put Florence on the map when it comes to a very specific breed of timepiece. But where Panerai has moved from Florence to Switzerland, Venezianico is a new Italian watchmaker on the block, and one that call’s a different city home and inspiration: Venice.

From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, Venice was one of the most important cities in the world. It was a melting pot of global influences, a financial centre and a trade hub – Marco Polo hailed from Venice, among many others. Sure, it’s no longer the shining beacon of wealth it once was, but between its famous canals and gorgeous Renaissance-era neoclassical architecture, it’s still among the most beautiful cities in existence.

St. Mark’s Clock Tower, Venice

That, of course, makes it ripe inspiration, and honestly, it seems almost strange that Venezianico are the first modern watch brand to really bring this legacy into the world of watchmaking. Venezianico Watches is the brainchild of two brothers, Alessandro and Alberto Morelli, locals to Venice who grew up a stone’s throw from the islands. Suffused in the architecture and history of the city – and studying at university there – the watch loving brothers decided to combine that love with Venice.

“It’s a beautiful city,” explains Alberto, “it’s very rich in terms of art and culture, all crowned by a very powerful symbol: the cross. You can find it at the top of San Marco Square’s clock tower and it’s considered the symbol of time passing in Venice, the perfect emblem for what we wanted to accomplish with our watches.”

If you’ve ever visited the city, you’ll have seen the golden cross yourself, right above the automaton-tolled bell above the famous square. It’s a beautiful piece of Renaissance art in and of itself and something tourists flock from across the world to see. “But we didn’t want our brand to be based on the touristy side of Venice,” Alberto continues. “We didn’t want to explore things everyone already knows. We wanted to bring something new and make people from Italy and across the world fall in love with some more hidden aspects of the city.”

So, that means no gondola-inspired cases, nothing you’ll see on a postcard. For example, Venice as a city was instrumental in creating the first submarines. Leonardo da Vinci was mulling the concept over in the 1500s and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli fleshed out the idea a century and a half later. In terms of ‘modern’ submarines, the Venice shipyards were building them as early as 1913 with the Nautilus and Nereide – the latter of which (for obvious reasons) gives its name to Venezianico’s flagship diver.

Venezianico Nereide Tungsteno 42, €779 (approx. £673) excl. tax

“It’s a very special watch for us. It’s an expression of Venetian innovation, of our city’s place in technology. When designing it we found old drawings of it in libraries and used them for inspiration.”

Aside from its sub-nautical roots, the Nereide also expresses Venezianico’s interest in materials. The bezel, usually aluminium for cost and practicality, or ceramic for hardness is instead made of tungsten. Incredibly heavy and dense, it’s a metal that’s hard to work with but practically unscratchable. It’s an off-kilter option for sure, but one that makes the Nereide stand out from the crowd more than its curvaceous good looks already do.

Venezianico Nereide Avventurina, from €779 (approx. £673) excl. tax

But that’s not the only material the brand plays with and their most popular model has yet another Venetian secret. While it’s ubiquitous these days among dressier pieces with celestial aspirations, aventurine glass was first invented on Murano in the 16th century, the famous glass-blowing island of Venice. It’s use in what is ostensibly a tool watch might seem odd at first until you frame it as the coming together of two very Venetian inventions. It looks phenomenal, too.

Venezianico Redentore Ultrablack 40, from €492 (approx. £428) excl. tax

Outside of material and innovation, Venetian architecture is of course incredibly important to Alberto, and is formative of Venezianico’s time-only watch, the Redentore. If that’s a name you’re not familiar with you, like us, have likely only really hit the main tourist spots in Venice – although you will have seen it as Il Redentore is on its own island and is one of the most iconic sights entering the city from the water.

“It was designed by Andrea Palladio, one of the most popular architects in Venice,” explains Alessandro, “to commemorate the end of the plague. It’s incredibly meaningful for Venetians. In the watch we tried to recall the shape of the dome in the glass and the clean, neoclassical architecture of the basilica, drawing from ancient Greek and Roman architecture.”

Venezianico Bucintoro 42, €1,595 (approx. £1,378) excl. tax

The result is a gorgeous, sweeping watch that, while simple in concept, has more personality than most time-only watches this side of a Genta riff. Finally, we have the Bucintoro, which not only links to another watercraft – this time on rather than under – but a major Venetian event, the Historical Regatta. The name comes from the Doge’s galley that opens the event and has become a sight renowned for speed on Venetian waters. “We wanted to do something different with our chronograph so rather than link it to motorsport like most brands, we instead went for this important annual event.”

The result is a clean, elegant chronograph complete with tachymeter that’s only missing a Regatta timer to be a pitch-perfect nautical tribute to the historical race. Still, as Venezianico as a company are still relatively young, there’s always time. Whether that time comes in the form of a neoclassical case, a slice of aventurine glass or an elegant tribute to speed on water, it’s sure to be pure Venetian style. Read ‘em and weep, Florence.

More details at Venezianico.

Daniel Roth is one of the legendary independent watchmakers, right up there with George Daniels, François-Paul Journe and Philippe Dufour. He earned his stripes at Audemars Piguet where he learned to fine-tune ultra-thin movements before becoming an integral part in the revival of Breguet. In 1988 he set out to create his own, eponymous brand where he could explore his own concepts and ideas, it was the closest thing to an overnight sensation that you get in horology. Now, almost four decades after its founding, the Daniel Roth name is back on everyone’s lips, as the brand have been revived by Bulgari as part of LVMH.

We’ll talk about how the new iteration of the brand is honouring Daniel Roth shortly. But first, let’s take a look back at the origins of the brand in 1988, and qualify what I mean when I say it was an overnight sensation. In short, what I’m talking about is the fact that Daniel Roth’s very first project as an independent brand was the 25-piece Souscription Tourbillon, and Souscription is the important word here.

Souscription (which very simply means subscription) is actually a sales method that is not uncommon in high end and independent watchmaking. The simplest way to describe it is that it’s a form of pre-order where buyers make a substantial down payment on the watch before production even begins in order to fund the actual production period. And production can be a very long time. The fact Daniel Roth’s first watch was a 25-piece Souscription is a massive vote of confidence for a new brand. Even more impressive is the fact that all 25 watches were commissioned by the same person, William Asprey from Asprey of London. With such a significant backer, the success of Daniel Roth was all but assured in an instant.

Original artwork by Daniel Roth

On a horological level, one of Roth’s biggest contributions to watchmaking is the unusual case shape, described as a double ellipse. It’s designed to allow his watches to have two focal points, one at the top and one at the bottom. On the Souscription Tourbillon, those focuses are the hour and minute display at the top and the tourbillon with retrograde seconds below. Retrograde displays are another Roth signature, inspired by the designs George Daniels used on some of his pocket watches.

Eventually, after a much celebrated series of watches and developments, Daniel Roth moved onto new projects and in 2000 the brand bearing his name was bought by Bulgari. Production was then halted entirely in 2015. However, in 2023 Bulgari revived the Daniel Roth name as a sister brand to Gerald Genta (another legacy brand of a famous watch designer). Just like Daniel Roth in 1988, their first watch is the Tourbillon Souscription, but this time a remake of the original.

In order to do this legendary watch justice, Bulgari have employed the full might of their LVMH connections and global horological friends. The DR001 manual movement was developed and assembled entirely by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, a manufacture that is heavily stepping up its haute horological prowess. The gold dial with Clous de Paris guilloche was then produced in the workshop of Kari Voutilainen, one of the leading independent watchmakers working at the moment. The new watch is a limited edition of 20-pieces, and all have already sold out.

While Daniel Roth the man has no connection to the modern version of the brand on a practical level, it does have his vocal support and backing. He said, “it brings me so much joy to see the Tourbillon being reborn. Oh yes! Modern watchmakers are remaking the watch, with just as much taste, just as much passion in reconstructing it, no deviations, staying loyal to the style I created. They’ve even improved it more, down to the finest details. Everything I’ve done is great to revisit.” What is certain is that if the modern Daniel Roth continues to do justice to the original, it’s an exciting time to be a Roth fan.

More details at Daniel Roth.