Watches NEWS
Lange & Sohne Pour le Merite - An interview about Honouring Fine Watchmaking - Monochrome Watches
The Lange & Sohne Pour le Merite Collection is a pinnacle in fine watchmaking. Our friend Peter Chong, who featured here on Monochrome on many ocassions, wrote a book about the very best watches coming from Saxony, Germany. Friend of Monochrome, Peter Nievaart, interviewed Peter Chong about his passion for A. Lange & Sohne and the book he wrote in honor of the Pour le Merite Collection. Peter Nievaart in conversation with Peter Chong….Pour le Merite book - photo by Edwin HeusinkveldLast Christmas I received a truly remarkable book about the Pour le Merite collection of A. Lange & Sohne, written by Peter Chong. It is not just a book about watches. It a tribute to fine watchmaking in Glashutte with a monumental size of 42 by 30 centimeters. The book contains many A3 and A2 sized photos of various details, including finishing and the servicing of a Tourbillon Pour le Merite. The size and the quality of the photos provide a unique view on the fine parts of a watch movemen
Ressence Type 2 e-Crown Concept - The First Self-Setting Mechanical Watch
Here, at MONOCHROME, we’re not huge fans of the smart-watches, to say the least. We cherish and celebrate watches in their purest (probably old-school) form: ME-CHA-NI-CAL! We love gears, pinions, hand-decoration, complications but also all the devoted people that work behind the scenes. Smart-watch, as tech objects, never ticked the boxes. However, we have to?keep up with the times and admit that in some cases, technology can be brilliant (we are, after all, a web medium). Today, Ressence launches the?Type 2 e-Crown Concept and they might have found the recipe to reconcile us with electronics…The crown, a mechanism to wind and to adjust watches, was invented by Adrien Philippe in 1842… and has been an unchallenged standard since!The crown certainly is one of the most important parts of a watch for the simple reason that it is the one with which we have most interactions. We use it, without thinking about it, to wind the movement or to adjust the time. It has become s
Tissot Heritage Petite Seconde - Value Proposition Review (Specs & Price)
Vintage-inspired watches are all the rage these days with military and dive watches usually grabbing the spotlight. Tissot has been around since the early 1850s and knows a thing or two about vintage watches. The brand's Heritage collection is full of throwbacks, celebrating milestones in both engineering and design. For instance, the Visodate line looks back at the 1950s when the date complication was integrated with an automatic movement. The recent Heritage 1973 Chronograph Limited Edition celebrates the brand's long ties with racing. The Tissot Heritage Petite Seconde is inspired by a dress watch from 1943 that was marketed as an elegant piece for men in big cities. Anti-magnetism was an innovative feature at the time with ongoing developments, and this actually created a bit of controversy with this new watch (more on that below). The Heritage Petite Seconde might be aesthetically faithful to the original but its timeless design still works well today. Let's take a closer look.Bac
Hands-On - Laurent Ferrier Galet Classic Tourbillon Dual with Open Dial (Specs & Price)
Laurent Ferrier is first and foremost a watch passionate and watch designer (he has spent 37 years at Patek Philippe,?ending his?career as creative director). He's not one to show off or boast about his achievements, preferring instead to let his exceptional work speak for itself. Even then, he likes to keep things understated, at least on the dial side, ensuring the focus remains primarily on functionality and practicality (although the watches are gorgeous to look at too.) This year, however, he has finally bowed to the wishes of some of his passionate collectors and, for the first time ever, created a watch where the tourbillon is visible from the dial side –?stocking for some, desired by others… Today, we're going hands on with this beauty, which still features all the technical hallmarks of a wonderfully elegant Laurent Ferrier timepiece.The role of a tourbillon, first and foremost, was at first to improve timekeeping accuracy by attempting to counter the effects of gr
Vacheron Constantin FIFTYSIX Collection (Entry Level, Sub-10k) Specs & Price
When you think about Vacheron, you usually have in mind complex watches, Haute-Horlogerie, rare handcrafts and a unique sense of precious elegance. Not a single word of which relates to the notion of affordability. However, the deal is about to change. Indeed, the brand has developed a whole new strategy (which it already began implementing with the Quai de L’Ile in steel), by introducing an entry-level collection, the?Vacheron Constantin FIFTYSIX. New movements, some even without the costly Hallmark of Geneva, new design, and a sub-10,000 starting price… Promising? Let’s have a first look.What is the idea behind this “Vacheron for the masses” (relatively speaking, of course)? The new?Vacheron Constantin FIFTYSIX is meant to attract new watch enthusiasts. Understand that by that, we mean younger, less fortunate and maybe less hardcore collectors. To reach that group of customers, VC worked on both a more contemporary design, yet still very Vacheron overall
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