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

Cvstos... interesting discussion - Monochrome Watches
After being offline for a few weeks, i am finally ready to post again. I moved to another?house and although i still don’t have an internet connection i can sometimes use a friends connection to read some forums and now post.One of the few discussions i read and enjoyed reading a lot, is the discussion about Cvstos. Cvstos is in my opinion a brand that has ‘borrowed’a lot of their inspiration from another brand, Richard Mille. While Richard Mille makes extarordinairy pieces and created a unique look for his watches, cases and movements, this relatively new comer has more or less the same look. Just have a look at these photos of Cvstos and the beautiful Richard Mille RM12… Ad - Scroll to continue with article Besides the similarities in design of the case and movement (i am not assuming their are technically of the same level!!!), they al

Montblanc 1858 Small Seconds - Review with photos, specs and price - Monochrome Watches
Towards the end of last year, Montblanc released a new collection: the Montblanc 1858 Collection. The Meisterstuck of this collection is the Montblanc 1858 Chronograph Tachymeter in pink gold (ref. 112637) that houses the beautiful calibre 16.29 movement from the brand’s Villeret collection. The new 1858 collection also includes another model, named the Montblanc 1858 Small Second, which?features the manually wound MB 23.03 movement. There are three stainless steel editions, one with a black dial and white indices, one with a blue dial, and a limited edition with a black dial and creme-coloured indices. The collection received high marks upon its introduction, and now again on the SIHH. Let’s have a closer look at the?Montblanc 1858 Small Second and the limited edition?that is limited to 858 pieces.The Inspiration – a Tribute to Minerva's BirthThe collection is named after the year in which Minerva was founded by Charles Robert in Villeret. In 2006 Minerva was acquire

Behind-The-Scenes: Inside Sellita, The Giant Supplier of Mechanical Movements
The words in-house and manufacture have been used and abused by the watchmaking industry for many years. Yet, the reality is somewhat different. This isn’t a bad thing, actually, because vertical integration is not an end in itself. And it has never been; watchmaking was born as a cottage industry. When it comes to movements, many brands source their engines (and many parts, for that matter) from third parties. Producing a movement is a complex endeavour; it requires thorough expertise and a critical size to manufacture reliable calibres while controlling costs. In this respect, you have probably heard about Sellita movements. These are some of the most commonly used calibres in luxury timepieces. Created in 1950, the company has become one of the industry’s best-known and most prolific mechanical movement suppliers, with its products beating in the cases of millions of watches.The story of Sellita goes as far back as 1950 when Sellita Watch Co. SA was founded in La Chaux-d

First Look: The Lightweight Maurice Lacroix Aikon Automatic in Titanium
Integrated sports watches have been a hit since the 1970s when the Royal Oak and Nautilus changed everything, and affordable options are all the rage today. Look no further than Tissot's PRX Powermatic 80 as an example. Maurice Lacroix's Aikon Automatic perhaps does it best with a masterful combination of luxury and attainability. Usually comprised of stainless steel, the collection has strayed into bronze on rare occasions and also titanium for an Automatic Chronograph, but the latest titanium Aikon Automatic models are a first for the series and a logical, lightweight addition.The Aikon was introduced in 2016, but the mechanical automatic launched two years later in 2018 (and you know we're all about mechanical watches at MONOCHROME). It's certainly a diverse collection with many dial variants, complications, case sizes and materials, but the classic time and date models are the core of the collection. It has a distinctive style that's easily recognizable as a Maurice Lacroix and is