Four stand-out artisanal watchmakers we've seen at Geneva Watch Week
As advocates of the whole mechanical watchmaking industry, sharing the passion for watches on a daily basis, even we sometimes discover truly fascinating new people, brands and watches. We've always had a devotion to bringing you the best in the business, and this includes providing a podium to the smallest of the small. We're madly enthusiastic about people dedicating their entire life to painstakingly creating what they believe is the best possible watch. And in true artisanal watchmaking, that means by hand, all alone or with a very small team, and with tremendous amounts of patience. During the recent Geneva Watch Week, we got up close with four such watches by small independent makers, often working solo. Some familiar faces, and some entirely new, but all of them equally fascinating and astounding to behold.Earlier this year published three Sunday stories (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) where we listed some of the best independent watchmakers outside of Switzerland. In a sense, today's

A Technical Perspective - New Devices to Optimize Minute Repeaters
Repeater clocks were invented well before electric lighting, in order to be able to consult the time in the dead of night. By activating a trigger or a pusher, a repeater chimes the time on demand and is often regarded, and rightfully so, as one of the pinnacles of mechanical watchmaking. Dozens of components, manufactured to exact tolerances, must be combined to orchestrate these extremely complex mechanisms. The quality of a minute repeater is also judged by the sound that it produces. Watchmakers pay utmost attention to their acoustic quality, patiently adjusting various parameters to reach the loudest, clearest and richest sound possible. The pace of the chime or the eventual background noise (the buzzing noise produced by the regulator) are also particularly important. In their quest to produce the ultimate minute repeater, watchmakers conduct sound research programs to optimise the chime of their watches.In a minute repeater, sound is most of the time produced by small hammers st

Omega Seamaster Diver 300M now with White Ceramic Dial (Specs & Price)
Last year marked the introduction of the revised Seamaster Diver 300M, a.k.a. the “Bond watch”, a.k.a. Omega’s entry-level diver. Renewed with a slightly larger case, a redesigned dial in ceramic, laser-engraved with the iconic wave pattern, available in multiple colours and materials, the main evolution concerned the arrival of an in-house, Master Chronometer movement. This year, Omega expands the collection with a new White Ceramic dial for the Seamaster Diver 300M.Certainly, this new model isn’t Omega’s main novelty of the year… This role has been given to the chronograph version of this watch. What you see here is a simple visual update, which nevertheless deserves a mention for being rather handsome indeed. Ad - Scroll to continue with article The basic recipe of the 2018 Omega Seamaster Diver 300M has been kept, with a 4

Interview - The Online Watch Market - Eneuri Acosta From Hodinkee
Last but not least, to finish our series that aims at deciphering the world of online watch marketplaces, we’ve decided to talk to the leader of the pack (let’s be honest, credit where credit is due): HODINKEE. What started as a hobby and a sheer passion for watches by Ben Clymer has now grown to a large magazine and an e-commerce website focused on watches and everything related to watches – something that has generated its fair share of debate. For some, editorial and commercial activities shouldn’t coexist. So, in order to shed light on the commercial part of the equation, we leave the stage to HODINKEE’s COO,?Eneuri Acosta.Could you give us a short history of Hodinkee?HODINKEE was founded in 2008 by Ben Clymer as nothing more than a humble blog about vintage watches that he personally liked.?Ben's grandfather gifted him an Omega Speedmaster Mk40, so one day while bored at work he starting researching this watch and quickly discovered other notable and

TAG Heuer Monaco Titan Special Edition CAW218B - Hands-On, Price
Few watches in the world can compete with Jack Heuer's brilliant branding coup of his 1969 square-shaped Monaco chronograph with the world's most glamorous F1 race. There was a time in the watchmaking world when innovation' and imagination' were the keywords. Today, they have been replaced with special/limited edition' and titanium'. However, when it comes to golden oldies like the Monaco, the new buzzwords are a real treat for fans. Designed to mark the return of the Monaco Grand Prix in 2021 after a one-year hiatus provoked by the pandemic, here is the new TAG Heuer Monaco Titan Special Edition, that you can discover live!This special edition of 500 pieces of TAG's iconic Monaco is sheathed in sandblasted titanium and fitted with a modern version of the famous Calibre 11 automatic chronograph that made its debut inside the first Monaco. After the suspension of the Monaco GP last year, the F1 cars competing in the 2021 edition will undergo the qualifying rounds on Saturday, May 22. On