Table of contents for Fall 2021 in REVOLUTION WATCH

Tim Raue, the legendary Berlin-based, Michelin-starred restaurateur, is one of those people you’d like from the first moment you meet him. Although, to be fair, several days before meeting each other in person, I already had the opportunity to taste his cooking at his eponymous two-Michelin-starred, Chinese-themed restaurant, where I was also the recipient of his extraordinary kindness and generosity. At the time I visited, Raue was overseas, but he would be back in a few days, and he had arranged to meet up. The location for this encounter is something of a legend in Berlin. It is the Axel Springer headquarters, and we were permitted to use the private club situated on the top floor, thanks to Bild’s editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt. There, Raue told me the story of Axel…

Jaeger-LeCoultre is known for setting the gold standard of expert craftsmanship, refinement and the rare gift of timeless appeal. The Reverso is perhaps their most notable model, bringing an ingenious solution to a common problem for sporting gentlemen who found that their wristwatches were not up to their strenuous games of polo. Jaeger-LeCoultre rose to the challenge and in 1931 designed the unique mechanism that allowed the dial of the watch to be reversed into the case to protect it from damage. In the decades that followed, the Reverso saw its evolution from that of an innovative sports watch created for British Army officers in 1931 to a beautiful Art Deco timepiece at home anywhere from the boardroom to the most exclusive dinner party. The back of the watch case,…

IWC has long-standing credibility of being an advocate for sustainability in the Swiss watchmaking industry. In 2018, the company challenged the industry by being the first brand to release a Sustainability Report in line with the best practice standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), providing a transparent window into the world of a Swiss watch company that had never been offered before. In March 2021, IWC became the first Swiss luxury watch brand to attain Chain-of-Custody (CoC) certification from the Responsible Jewelry Council (RJC), confirming the gold and platinum used in its supply chain are sourced responsibly. Franziska Gsell has been the chief marketing officer for IWC Schaffhausen since 2015 and is also the chairwoman of the company’s sustainability committee. She explains, “The long life of our products is…

Driven by the incredibly abstract ideas and evocative art forms brought into vogue by modern masters like Dutch painter Piet Mondrian and Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuȿi, designer Gilbert Albert ushered in a new spirit of mid-century modernism at Patek Philippe in the 1950s. He shared a powerful aesthetic connection with these influential artists from the 20th century, and his watches reflected the same bold and fearless choices through their unique shapes. For Albert, who joined Patek Philippe at the age of 25, watch cases had to evolve beyond the customary round and rectangular forms. He started playing with asymmetrical shapes and dials featuring clean black sector lines. Just like the modernist sculptors, he pursued abstract forms relentlessly and moved away from the conventional art of watchmaking to create some of…

I suppose it depends on your level of cynicism. I remember speaking to another watch journalist, someone whom I respect and admire, about Panerai’s eSteel collection, which I consider to be one of this year’s most important watch launches in terms of both aesthetics and ethics. He responded dismissively, “It’s a few hundred watches. Do you really think it will make even the slightest impact on saving the environment?” He said this in the context of Panerai’s new focus on using recycled materials in their watches, a project started a year ago with a limited edition Submersible crafted from the rudder shaft of brand ambassador and renowned explorer Mike Horn’s Pangaea boat. Says Panerai CEO Jean-Marc Pontroué of their collaboration, “Mike came to see me in Neuchâtel, and he presented…

Long before the watch world discovered the virtues of virtual tools, record-breaking sales were actual spectacles of reverential rarities going under the hammer. Overseen by a handful of specialists, auction houses in the early ’90s mostly offered complicated pocket watches from Patek Philippe, Breguet and Vacheron Constantin. The Rolex mania hadn’t hit the world just yet, and the vintage market was predominantly fuelled by the desire for 19th century enamelled watches and automatons from the 1800s. Besides the rich, jet-setting Italians who had exceptional tastes and an unmatched appetite for rare collectibles, the market for vintage wristwatches in the late 1990s got a real boost with the introduction of Antiquorum’s themed auctions and its brilliantly illustrated catalogues. Founded and ran by the suave Osvaldo Patrizzi, Antiquorum’s unique sales would often…

The founder of TudorCollector.com, Ross Povey is regarded as the world’s leading expert on vintage Tudor watches. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Revolution magazine in the UK. He has contributed to influential horological publications including The Telegraph, The Rake, Watchonista and Hodinkee, and is the co-author of the book Daytona Perpetual, a celebration of the automatic Rolex Daytona released through Pucci Papaleo Editore. Ross is also an international speaker and regularly hosts watch events in the UK and Europe. A watch and jewellery writer, Barbara Palumbo is the mastermind behind the insightful and humorous web publications Adornmentality and What’s On Her Wrist. Barbara is also a speaker, podcaster, and regularly moderates panels within the trade. She’s vocal about watches, gems, politics, all of which come in large doses of truth and…

For two decades, I have told anyone that would listen that the watch world would one day be divided into the era before Richard Mille and the era after. Now upon the 20th anniversary of his brand, I believe that truth is self-evident in a René Descartes irrefutable evidence of God’s existence kind of way. There has been no modern brand in watchmaking history, created by a living founder, that has had such a massive global impact not just on horology, but also on contemporary culture itself. The change has been seismic, pervasive and irreversible. It was brought on by the singular vision of a man who was the ultimate rebel genius, who eschewed every existing aesthetic, technical and even material convention and cliche. What was once round, he made…

The wonderful thing about collecting and enjoying watches is that, most of the time, literally anything goes. Take fashion, for example; it comes and goes, and certain looks from the past half century are best forgotten or possibly revived only for a fancy dress party. But then all trends come full circle, and as sure as winter becomes spring and spring becomes summer, eventually everything has its day … again. Watches, thankfully, sit above this trying transience and are, with very few exceptions, pretty much timeless. However, the market does ebb and flow to a degree, and certain styles or configurations become highly sought after on the vintage market. Indeed, the modern watch market does tend to move in something of a pack. Think “fauxtina” (false patina), brass watches, 2021’s…

Meeting Hind Abdul Hamied Seddiqi in real life can leave a person in such a state of awe that they may just find themselves basking in the glow of her bright light while simultaneously transfixed on her every word. There is a presence — an aura — to Seddiqi that is genuine and powerful and yet still quite unassuming. The term “quiet force” comes to mind when one thinks of Seddiqi, though being “quiet” about her love of fine timepieces and all of horology itself she is most certainly not. “I’ve always loved watches and have never felt the need to pretend or to follow trends in the market,” she says. “I am known for being brutally honest, having always spoken my mind and trying my best to let people…

How does one become an expert? In the world of social media-based watch dealers, the words “watch expert” can be misleading or, at the very least, something of an exaggeration. To truly be expert in the field of horology, one must have spent years handling and inspecting watches. Only then can the nuances and tell-tales be understood and acted on accordingly. Behind Monaco Legend Group are two such men: one who has spent more than three decades dealing and advising on watches and can truly be described as an expert, Davide Parmegiani, and the other, Claude Cohen, who founded Monaco Legend Group and is a jewellery expert and talented auctioneer. Regarded as one of the most important watch dealers in the world, Davide Parmegiani deals in both vintage and modern…

In my 2020 story chronicling the extraordinary history of the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo, I referenced the First Impressionist Exhibition held in 1874 to demonstrate that, sometimes, it takes a while for the world to completely process and understand something that is truly visionary. I used the example that upon viewing Monet’s now-iconic Impression, Sunrise, the humorist, critic and clearly something of a moron, Louis Leroy, scathingly and derisively wrote, “Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.” History, of course, being the greatest judge, holds Monet in awed reverence while Leroy’s name has faded into an anonymity that is most analogous to the “unfinished wallpaper” he once so unwittingly compared Monet’s painting to. While it might have taken the world a few years to fully comprehend the…

Ladies and gentlemen, run for cover because we’ve gone nuclear. OK, forgive the levity. We have not followed in Robert Oppenheimer’s footsteps. And it is not our intention to generate the existential malaise that a certain sartorially challenged individual from Pyongyang has. Instead, I refer to the dial of our latest collaboration with one of our very favourite brands, Bvlgari. Let’s flashback to last year when we launched our Octo Finissimo Chronograph GMT in sandblasted titanium, with a fully luminous dial designed by the incredible Fabrizio Buonamassa. As you may recall, the objective with that watch was to create the ultimate “tool” version of the stunning record-setting automatic chronograph with the peripheral rotor. Any tool watch needs to have luminous indexes and hands. But in the Octo Finissimo, this proved…

1994 TO 2000 1994 LANGE 1 Ref. 101.021 Case:Yellow gold Dial: Solid silver, champagne 1998 LITTLE LANGE 1 Ref. 111.025 Case: Platinum Dial: Solid silver, rhodié 2000 LANGE 1 TOURBILLON Ref. 704.032 Case: Pink gold Dial: Solid silver, argenté Limited to 250 pieces 2001 TO 2007 2002 LANGE 1 MOON PHASE Ref.109.021 Case: Yellow gold Dial: Solid silver, champagne 2003 LANGE 1 "LUMINOUS" Ref. 101.029 Case: White gold Dial:Solid silver, black, luminous 2003 GROSSE LANGE 1 “LUNA MUNDI” Ref. 119.032 Case: Pink gold Dial: Solid silver, argenté Limited to 101 sets 2004 GRAND LANGE 1 Ref. 115.029 Case: White gold Dial: Solid silver, black, luminous 2008 TO 2014 2008 GRAND LANGE 1 Ref. 115.032 Case: Pink gold Dial: Solid silver, argenté 2009 LANGE 1 Ref. 101.039 Case: White gold Dial:…

Try this visual exercise. Close your eyes and imagine in front of you a rectangle, just about the size of a post stamp. Or if you’re too young to know what a post stamp is, an SD card. Short edge on top, longer edge on the sides. Now take the longer edges, add some thickness to these and lengthen them by half a centimetre on either end. At this point, if we were to ask you to fill the space in the middle with the hands of a watch and a minute track, there is a high chance that what you have assembled would resemble the face of the Cartier Tank. These elemental design characteristics of the Tank were first laid out by Louis Cartier some 104 years ago, in…

As the cavalcade of new watch releases was unveiled in the first half of this year, it quickly became apparent that one colour would dominate 2021 — green. Patek Philippe announced the swan song of the 5711 with a coveted green dial version. Rolex debuted a leafy new Datejust dial in green, and it seems like every other brand had a dial that looked like it had burst from a garden in springtime. The explosion in popularity of green dials is, of course, just a trend. A fashionable fad. It is, however, representative — perhaps subconsciously — of a much more significant change sweeping through the business of luxury watches. It’s not just the dials that are going green; the broader industry is seeing a concerted shift towards sustainability. From…

I don’t think I need to spend much time introducing Eric Ku. Whether your poison is vintage Rolex, modern rare Rolex, Cartier, independent watchmaking or virtually any other brand, you can bet that Eric will have handled the very best examples on the planet. A serial entrepreneur, collector and super dealer, Eric Ku is a brand like no other. I consider it a privilege to call him an old friend, and we go way back to the early days of online forums, including the Vintage Rolex Forum. Nothing brightens my day more than a WhatsApp message from Eric showing me a new find or a new quarry that he has his sights on. And I clearly remember the day he sent me a picture of a Tudor chronograph like no…

Looking for a new place to hang out and discuss watches? With the seeming death of most watch forums and with ennui around Instagram, the watch community is ready for a new place to talk about tickers and waffle about watches. Step forward Loupe This. In the last 12-month period, a number of online auction sites have appeared that are dedicated to wristwatches. When Loupe This was launched this summer, there was never any discussion about the quality and authenticity of upcoming lots, as this show is run by two of the world’s leading authorities on the subject, Eric Ku and Justin Gruenberg. Eric Ku is arguably one of the most well-known and respected watch dealers and experts in the world. The serial entrepreneur has been a fixture on the…