I didn't take a camera this year, so sorry no pics, but the were certainly some amazing watches - as per last year, many beautifully engineered pieces that for a variety of reasons I didn't like or at least would want to own even if I had unlimited cash, mainly because they were just too fussy for me.
It's great to see new and small brands, some of which I'd never heard of before and watches you'll never see outside the web / magazines in the unless you go to this sort of event. Some themes - skelotonising is still something a number of high end manufacturers believe will sell watches and there were a number of designers pushing different ways of displaying time.
In no particular order.
JLC - Much fussier than my usual taste, but I want a Duometre Chronograph so much it hurts. Definite lottery win purchase. At the slightly less expensive end of their range the Deep Sea Chronograph is also a big favourite of mine, but I'd have a stainless steel case rather than the admittedly very clever Cermet.
Ressence - The rep was extremely helpful and the Type 3 is a beautifully made piece with a great way of displaying time & date. The full sapphire case is very pleasing to handle and the oil filled watch is great to look at - the case almost disappears.
http://ressence.eu/collection/type-3/ In the rarefied atmosphere of Haute Horology £11k ish is not a bad price for such an innovative, low volume piece really.
Nomos - Despite being distracted by the lovely young lady sales agent, I did manage to appreciate some of their very nice, new models. The thicker (than normal for them) auto versions were very attractive.
Muhle Glashutte - These guys had a number of prototypes - The SEEBATAILLON GMT looked really good, the Teutonia II Chronograph was a watch I wanted to see, having admired the magazine photo's I'd seen - nice watch, but the sub-dials were too small and legibility overall not good. I really liked the white dialled M 29 Classic.
Revelation - The "magic dial" still amazes even though I saw it last year http://www.revelation-watches.com/film_r4.php and the case design is really nice. The agent was lovely and didn't even panic (at least not visibly) when I almost dropped her £13k watch on the floor.
Lange & Sohne have some simply beautiful watches and models such as the Grand Lange 1 and the 1815 Up/Down would compete very hard with the Duometre for my lottery win money.
Ludovic Ballouard - Extremely well made watches with great designs, although I'm pretty sure the "Upside Down" would annoy me after a while.
MB&F - Max Busser is obviously a very brave or crazy man. The Horological Machines are just amazing designs executed flawlessly at massive cost to a limited audience. I tried on an MB&F 4 Thunder Bolt. What an amazing, but frankly ridiculous watch? Max told us that both the titanium and the sapphire parts of the case were made CNC machined from solid blocks - the sapphire part using diamond cutters and that both pieces took about a month of CNC time. The movement is also amazing, but the whole thing results in a tiny time display without a date of even a second hand - at over £100k very rich extroverts only need apply, but he said about 91 of the 96 made had been sold. By comparison the lovely LM1 is pretty conventional, but these things are relative.
Cecil Purnell - These guys had just a few watches on display. All beautifully made, very expensive and hideously ugly.
Meridian - As last year, the watches don't look remotely well enough made for the asking prices.
Dottling - These guys make very expensive safes, watch cases and winders - watch the video http://www.doettling.com/en/tabletop...yrowinder.html
I don't even like watch winders, but I would love one of those - I didn't dare ask how much?
Eterna - Back in the UK with some decent looking stuff including a re-issue of the Kontiki.
Urwerk - Almost as way out as MB&F but a bit more wearable. I love some of their designs, but it really is complexity and engineering for the sake of it.
Hoptroff - These guys make watches with unusual complications including for instance a stock price movement indicator linked by bluetooth to the London Stock exchange, but their No 10 Atomic Pocket Watch was both amazing and bonkers with more data than you could ever need on a single dial and self contained Atomic accuracy (not radio controlled)
http://www.theprodigalguide.com/2013...-pocket-watch/
MCT - Their Sequential One is another innovative way of displaying the time http://www.mctwatches.com/ Expensive watches, that with that mechanism must I'd imagine need quite frequent (and expensive) servicing.
So, another very interesting exhibition. This time enjoyed with a few fellow TZ-ers and also involving Harrods, Burlington Arcade, Bond Street, beer and curry - perfect.
Last edited by andy tims; 10th November 2013 at 16:18.
Andy
Wanted - Damasko DC57
Thanks for your comments.
As per my comments in the thread on the Ressence, $20K for a watch like this in today's market seems like a bargain. An expensive bargain in comparison to many other things but still a bargain in this market.Originally Posted by andy tims
Forgot to put in the first post.
Saw the most expensive watch I'd ever see yesterday - a £700,000 Jacob & Co monstrosity completely covered in high quality diamonds
Andy
Wanted - Damasko DC57
She was very composed and retrieved it as quick as she could without looking rude
Andy has produced a nice,comprehensive write up so i won't blather on,but i have to say i was most taken by the HYT watches. Absolutely fascinating stuff and very well explained by the lovely girl on the stand.
And yes,the 700k Jacob & Co 'thing' was an absolute monstrosity.
Oh..nearly forgot...also came across the top two most useless complications on a watch i have seen for a long time. I forget the brand but...both were driven by a little bluetooth chip inside the watch. One had a display that shoed share price movements (or something like that) by way a a little hand moving along a scale. The other had an arc consisting of the alphabet..the little pointer moved to the letter that indicated the diary entry of your next appointment. The chap on the stand had one on..his was pointing to F because his father was visiting.
Having viewed most of these watches over Andy's shoulder yesterday, there's not much that I can add to his write-up, most of which I agree with. (Photography was forbidden in Harrods, discouraged in Burlington Arcade and difficult at Salon QP due to the lighting and glass cases used, so apologies for the overly-large taken-from-the-web shots).
I was really taken with the Ressence - a new way of telling time, but that was easy to read and not overly gimmicky, and that I don't think you'd grow tired of. The watch was also amazingly tactile, with a full sapphire casing. Also very good value for money (after looking at half million pound watches in Harrods, it may be a relative thing...) at around £10k. If one ever pops up on SC, I'll be first in the queue!
The £700,000 Jacob that Andy mentions was actually relatively tasteful (for some value of the word "tasteful"), being set with black baguette diamonds, but some of their other watches at around the £500,000 mark were truly awful.
Unlike the other Andy, I thought that the Hoptroff watches - that connected by Bluetooth to your phone to show various information - were an interesting concept, showing that smart watches don't have to be digital items (like the Pebble, Sony SmartWatch, Samsung Gear, etc) but can link technology with mechanical movements. Unfortunately they don't do an Android version yet (only iOS) so I wasn't tempted to buy. Prices start around £1,650 +VAT, so possibly the cheapest watches we saw all day!
The other watch that I really, really liked was one that's had mixed reception here - the Omega Planet Ocean GoodPlanet. Harrods was the first time that I had seen one in the flesh. Even with the black date wheel, I want one!!
Great day out, good company, possibly slightly too many watches, but well punctuated with beer and food.
Thank Christ you posted that Omega, I was severely losing the will to live any longer after the sight of those other two!
Seems there's still a glimmer of sanity still pervading the watch world.
That Hoptroff is more appealing that I would have expected from village's comments. ;-)
The show was certainly a great opportunity to see quite a few unique creations, here is a few that stood out for me.
Andreas Strehler:
Worth checking, if you haven't heard his name before: http://www.monochrome-watches.com/an...trehler-cocon/
A non-traditional Lange:
A round Hautlence:
The most impressive for me was blue dials of De Bethune, having seen many pictures before, this was the biggest gap between pictures and in-person.
I'm extremely taken with the Ressence type 3 -but does anyone have confirmation of the actual price and availability-?
Several folk have mentioned 10 or 11k but according to other sources on the web they are 23,000 euro ie: £19k
http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/hands-o...e-pics-pricing
Apologies for any confusion that I may have inadvertently caused, but when Benoit Mintiens was talking to me about pricing, he said that entry level was about £11,000, which was (I assume) for the Seriesone. The price of the Type 3 does seem to be somewhere around the £19,000 mark. I'm still toying with the idea of selling off a large percentage of my collection just so that I could buy one. It's a long time (no pun intended) since I last saw a watch that appealed to me so much.
I'd say go for it! you'd be wearing something special - only 50 in the world! you never know, it could become a cult classic to be sold
at Christies for 50k one day.....
Before I'd pull the trigger I'd get confirmation of service intervals and cost, along with time keeping accuracy.
God knows where you actually buy one from-according to the Ressence website the closest retailer is in Paris but
they don't list the type 3 available or any Ressence watches for that matter.......
http://www.chronopassion.com/watches.../350/type-1004
Still a bargain at that price in my opinion (in today's high end watch market).
Sadly not so much of a bargain that I can actually afford it, but theoretically it's still a bargain. ;-)
Think you'll have to join the queue on SC for one of these behind me, Tony and Tim!!
I was really taken with the Ressence - a new way of telling time, but that was easy to read and not overly gimmicky, and that I don't think you'd grow tired of. The watch was also amazingly tactile, with a full sapphire casing. Also very good value for money (after looking at half million pound watches in Harrods, it may be a relative thing...) at around £10k. If one ever pops up on SC, I'll be first in the queue!
Malc
If he doesn't win in the Innovation category at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève on the 15th, there is no justice in this world.
(I may have gone a *little* bit over the top there, but I really do believe that it's a brilliant piece of innovation and design).
The Ressence really caught my eye, too - very original and really striking to look at. The effect was slightly dented by the fact that by Saturday afternoon the only functioning example was a grey one, which looks less otherwordly that its black counterpart since you can see the edges of the various rotating discs. The black one had sprung a leak and had an air bubble.
I really enjoyed the Hoptroff range, if only for their highly original take on smart watches and the ways their information can be read. Their atomic pocket watch is a technical tour de force, too, even if the innards look rather underwhelming: the atomic timing unit is a large, sealed, square steel case mounted to the PCB, which seems odd somehow, given the complexity of the dial side.
The friend with whom I went has just ordered a Schofield Blacklamp and that was rather fun to play with. The carbon case is as light as one would expect, but the way it's been built up gives it a tactile quality and visual beauty (from the various factes of the constituent layers) which doesn't come across in photographs. If I were cavilling, I'd say it's a little tall for my taste, but it's really interesting and good to see British manufacture represented alongside the acknowledged world leaders.
I agree with the views of the De Bethune range, too - we had a close look at the DB25 and it really is breathtakingly beautiful. I have long been a little suspicious of haute horlogerie and here, in a single watch, was something which made me "get" the whole concept.
Some were a little less successful: while I admire the singleminded approach of Konstantin Chaikin, I'm not sure that a miniature, 22-second mechanical animation of Eadward Muybridge's famous "galloping horse" footage is really worth a bulky complication in itself. Oh, and I was weirdly underwhelmed by Lange's offerings, too, which was odd given that I've always loved them in photographs.
Doesn't bode well for either QC or robustness – certainly not at circa £20K.
Ah. Oh dear. Not so encouraging. :-(
I was looking at their website earlier and they certainly have innovated.
Personal highlights for me were (in no particular order):-
Chatting to Stepan Sarpaneva and handling his truly original watches. One day...
Having the Ludovic Ballouard Upside Down Watch thrust enthusiastically into my hand by the man himself. I absolutely loved it and the other one that forms the roman numerals as the hour changed. His enthusiasm was plain to see and I was like a kid at Christmas.
Having a natter with Arno Haslinger about is Heuer collecting and nabbing a copy of his book (not literally!).
Checking out Zeitwinkel who were a real pleasant surprise, name notwithstanding.
Saying hi to "Our Piers" and wondering whether he specifically requested the pitch next to the truly awful Meridian to make his own offering look ten times better.
I could go on...
Great day, great show.
Hi don't mean to hijack the thread but did anyone who went to QP see the Pinion watches, they were meant to debut there and wanted to get opinions as not been mentioned as anyone's highlights.
I bumped into some friends unexpectedly so my photography was curtailed... probably a good thing for lovers of photography everywhere, but I managed to snap a couple of the Ressence watches. They're not my cup of tea and I wouldn't want to service one in twenty years time, but the fluid-filled cavity under the crystal certainly did a thoroughly good job of making the time look like it was painted on, rather than under the crystal, quite a striking effect! Does the fluid-filled Sinn have the same visual effect? I've never seen anything look quite like it in the flesh.
I'm a big MB&F fan, and loved their twin balance heritage(?) piece...
With the most wonderfully ridiculous domed crystal.
But those, and a really bad shot of Kari Voutilainen's (definite place on the lottery list) power reserve watch with the ceramic dial were all I managed to get.
The hoptroff guys had a really infectious enthusiasm when talking about their pieces, I had made a point of tracking them down to see one of their 3d printed cases in the flesh. I didn't think it was of a standard I'd be happy to shell out big money for, but I can't wait for the technology to mature, it's moving on soo fast!
I didn't see the guy who was there last time showing how he made the fish/birds guilloche dials, but the Jaquet Droz stand, with the guy showing off the engraving for their amazing bird repeater dials made up for it! I know so many starving artists that it's always lightens my day to find people who have managed to find a place that pays to keep their skills in the world. Really an amazing thing to see in the flesh
http://www.jaquet-droz.com/the-bird-repeater/en/
Likewise the Julien Coudray stand. I guess I've always had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about young companies appropriating older names and dates, and the watches really weren't to my tastes at all. But to design and make your own tourbillon from solid platinum is no small undertaking and must take some damn good faith in your business plan. I came away with a new admiration for these low volume manufactures with their diverse craftsmen and women that I don't think I really had realised before.
All in all, a great and eye opening day. :)
Last edited by glazba; 12th November 2013 at 01:50.
It does. As I tilt my UX, the hands and markers appear to be a fraction of a millimetre below the surface of the crystal.
I just had an email from the boss of Ressence watches-
The type 3 is not even in production yet which may explain
the apparent difficulty in finding a retailer with one for sale.
My wife and I went to the Pinion stand, but Piers was in conversation with another visitor at the time so I didn't get an opportunity to handle the watches. What he did say was that he'd worked very hard simply to get the watches to Salon QP and they weren't fully representative of the quality and finish of the final production watches.
He'd clearly done well just to be there, but it reinforced for me what a huge undertaking it is to bring a low-volume own designed watch to market and compete effectively with the established brands.
I wish him lots of luck.
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