Reply With QuoteThey are great feats of mechanical engineering perhaps, certainly not art .. although some radically new and well designed watches might be artful I guess, regardless of the price
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No, Stevie Wonder'sOriginally Posted by stefmcd
They are great feats of mechanical engineering perhaps, certainly not art .. although some radically new and well designed watches might be artful I guess, regardless of the price
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I do agree with that to an extent but for me there's a bit more to it than just supply & demand. It's like art is another dimension to the view.
Take a hotdog for example, you make some at home and the sausages cost a few quid depending on where you buy them plus a quid for some rolls, say a fiver all in for 6 (unless you bought the organic free roaming wild boar sausage for a tenner at the farmers market). Now I think this is as close as you get to empirical value in the UK. What it cost to make the goods plus a bit of margin for the producer.
Now, if you go to a fare or a football match this weekend you're going to get a different hot dog - mashed up Alsatian and saw dust type of sausage in a 3 month shelf life roll and it costs a fiver just for one! That's supply and demand as I see it. The man with no options gets shafted, hence why you need a few quid in the bank to stop you getting rumped by life. Unfortunately you can't take a hot dog to a fare (the mustard would leak in your bag) so you always get shafted.
Then there's the art dimension. Someone paints a picture of a hot dog where the sausage is thick and meaty and the roll is the queen with a bit of sausage poking out either end and mustard running off her chin and then it becomes something else (probably treason). The paint and canvas had a supply & demand value to start with (that would be reduced in this instance as they are now no use for their original purpose) but someone will come along and shell out much more because of the "artistic value".
I operate on a 5% fee for anyone with painting skills looking for artistic inspiration....
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Like Steinhart, anybody can successfully copy a work of art.
No, actually an exhibit in the Museum of Bad Art in Massachusetts.
Worth a look through the exhibits for a laugh.
Cheers,
Neil.
A Patek is no more a work of art than a Rolex.
This is art, not just something mechanical with a multitude of identical brethren that comes off of a production line in a factory.
Cheers,
Neil.
Agreed. Wristwatches — lovingly-handcrafted and artisanal though they can sometimes be from the likes of Philippe Dufour and Roger Smith — are in the vast majority of cases not art.
Cost + margin is really an incorrect view of how value and prices come about. To see the flaw in this thinking you just have to ask yourself the question, 'if the value of something is determined by its inputs' costs plus margin or whatever, then what determines the cost of the inputs?' There is no satisfactory answer to this without getting circular. It really is just supply and demand. Art is high cost where the supply becomes unique and the demand hyped up massively.
Art is simply a separate category to other consumer goods. One where something is admired simply for itself with no other consumer function involved. If I put a Rolex on a plinth and display it, then it becomes art. If I put that same Rolex on my wrist it becomes a tool and item of personal fashion.
Absolutely, categorically NOT art.
Maybe the Breguet "Marie Antoinette" could qualify but if there is a Rolex that can be qualified as art it certainly wouldn't be one of the vast number of basic steel sports watches they make, no matter what the quality of the engineering. Design classic maybe but not even close to art.
Well said.Art? Not so much. But...
Most people don't realise just what an engineering achievement it is to have such accuracy from a mechanical thing, so anyone who can think beyond the name on the dial deserves some respect.
You want to explain Rolex from an economic point of view, the chap you want is Veblen - Rolex have moved beyond being a mere watch and now have a whole raft of additional significance attached to them.
There are a fair few mechanical movements that are in roughly the same ball park today and there always have been. The real advantage Rolex brought to the table was being able to weather a number of economic shocks and the disruptive effect of mass market quartz pretty well on their own terms due to their unique corporate structure.
The watches are good, but the marketing (and this really was Wilsdorf's genius) and economics behind them are better and allowed them to mythologise themselves from being one of many higher end mass market manufactures in the early sixties to being the definitive aspirational high mass market brand by the late eighties.
Rolex can make more than enough watches to satisfy demand. It's not in their interest to do so. Mind you, vintage Rolex will always have an advantage because, whisper it quietly, they didn't make their first million watches until well into the latter half of the twentieth century. Even Seiko, founded at around the same time were well ahead of them there.
To put it another way, if it's art then it's conceptual art, because the story is as important as the object. Rolex or R Mutt, it's all taking the same thing...
Last edited by M4tt; 5th July 2017 at 18:37.
That's not art, that's Victorian porn. Just because Lizzy Siddal actually kept her kit on for a change...A Patek is no more a work of art than a Rolex.
This is art, not just something mechanical with a multitude of identical brethren that comes off of a production line in a factory.
I'd have thought you more a Waterhouse kind of chap!
In a free market economy, something becomes worth what people are prepared to pay for it. End of story. And if you can raise the desire by clever marketing then the "value" increases proportionally. If you restrict supply so people re-sell at higher than retail, then you can increase your retail price. All part of increasing the desire to increase the price.
Rolex have always advertised big time (excuse the pun) in glossy magazines etc. I can remember full page ads in National Geographic in the 60s. I think they still do it. They talk it up. Other cheaper brands are just as accurate and well made. They just don't have the desirability which Rolex have created. Of course, they couldn't have done that if the product was rubbish. So some credibility is due to the quality of the product. They have created a cult following and now the devotees will buy at any price because its fashionable and the devotees will pay silly money for old ones. A Grand Seiko is a better made, and more accurate product at a cheaper price, but this is heretical for a cult follower to hear.
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that there are no Seiko models, Grand or otherwise, equipped with a free sprung balance. For tedious technical reasons, I'm pretty certain that, all things being equal, a well set up watch with a freesprung balance will be more stable than a watch without a freesprung balance. Seiko make some lovely watches, Rolex make some lovely watches but I'm not remotely sure how you'd make the case that a Grand Seiko is better made. Maybe, perhaps, if you were specifying a specific GS and a specific Rolex you'd have a case, but frankly such a broad claim followed by an attack on Rolex owners is just an unfortunate thing to do. At the very least, I'd say that you have an evidential burden you will struggle to meet on a forum populated by people who know more about both Rolex and Seiko than most.
Thank you for your response. Just trying to stimulate some discussion. The points you make are valid and interesting. I actually like Rolex watches. Not meaning to attack Rolex owners specifically, but just highlighting the fact that some owners of all brands have an over defensive attitude.
I guess it depends on your point of view. No doubt the movement is nice piece of engineering but, a work of art, really? Rolex make some nice looking watches but, also, some hideous looking models. I guess each to their own but anything with a diamond studded dial makes me want to chuck!
Yes, I can see it. The latest Airking is in the Picasso style with big things and little things jumbled up and random colours thrown all over the place.
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