Keeping Track

FAREWELL TO BIG
Talking of drifts, one thing easily noticeable is that watches have shed their bulk, having become thinner and smaller than their yesteryear cousins. Gone are the days of huge watches, ranging between 46-50 mm diameters. At the recent BaselWorld, most of the watches presented had a diameter of between 39 and 43 mm. Starting with the Slim d’Hermès (39.5 mm), Hublot Big Bang Broderie (41 mm), Jaquet Droz Grande Seconde Morte (43 mm), and Tudor North Flag (40 mm).

LADIES WATCHES COME OF AGE
Fine mechanical horology no more remains an exclusively masculine preserve. Gone are those days when ladies’ watches were just precious stones, dressy and downsized men’s watches. In the last one decade, ladies’ watches pack a fascinating combination of horological precision, superb artisanship and feminine elegance. Brilliantly reflected in Omega Ladymatic, Ballon Bleu De Cartier, Richard Mille’s RM-10 Tourbillon Fleur, Roger Dubuis’ Excalibur Broceliande, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Rendez-Vous Celestial, Girard-Perregaux’s Cat’s Eye and others.

MECHANICAL SAVOIR FAIRE
Fine watchmaking is all about pursuit of precision, power reserve, reliability, resistance to shocks and magnetism, as well as the ease and convenience of its adjustment. And brands have never wavered from displaying their technical prowess and mechanical savoir faire in quest of the Holy Grail. Last year, Jaeger-LeCoultre unveiled the Hybris Mechanica 11 with its combination of minute repeater and tourbillon in a watch less than 8 mm in thickness which reduces position-rate errors and, in due course, may obviate the use of a tourbillon altogether while Montblanc introduced the Meisterstück Heritage Pulsograph which has only one button to start/stop the timing mechanism and to reset it to zero. This year we had the A. Lange & Söhne 1815 Tourbillon which lets you set the watch to the exact second with the pull of the crown; Piaget’s Altiplano Chrono with its 4.6 mm movement and its 8.24 mm case is an ode to its legendary slenderness; the Rolex calibre 3255 has a new-generation mechanical movement with 14 patents, which sets a new level of chronometric precision with criteria surpassing those of COSC (the Swiss Official Chronometer Testing Institute); and Cartier’s Astrotourbillon Skeleton which is endowed with a niobium-titanium case, carbon crystal components, and the adjustment-free and lubrication-free pallet and escapement wheel— innovations which push the boundaries of watchmaking. The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Acoustic Concept is the first watch to offer audible chimes that can be heard by someone other than the wearer. Seiko‘s Astron GPS Solar using the power of light to connect to the GPS network tells time with atomic clock precision adjusting the time zone at the touch of a button.

DIAL AS A CANVAS
A work of art revives and re-adapts time and space. The aesthetically pleasing watches have revived traditional crafts in their quest to bring something unusual and different. In fact, the use of metiers d’art such as engraving, enamelling, gemsetting and filigree as a means of decorating and embellishing a watch has reached its zenith. From marquetry in mother of pearl, feathers or butterfly wings, to the use of porcelain and embroidery, brands hope to differentiate their offerings and seduce a connoisseur clientele with miniature works of art on their dials. Chanel’s Mademoiselle Privé collection with a raft of ‘coromandel’ dials, uses for the first time, the art of glyptic, a technique to sculpt semi-precious gemstones both in intaglio and relief; Jaquet Droz’s ‘Lady 8 Flower’ presents a lotus flower at 12 o-clock which reveals a pearl or a diamond enclosed in its petals and the Petite Heure Minute Relief Carps, a scene in champlevé enamel creating the illusion of carp playing underwater; Richard Mille’s RM 19-02 Tourbillon Fleur has a hand-painted gold magnolia on the dial which opens and closes to reveal a flying tourbillion which rises about a millimetre up out of the movement on its gem-set stamen to echo the motion of a flower arching upward toward the sun to increase its own chances of pollination; the Ronde Louis Cartier XL filigree watch reinvents the centuries-old technique of filigree; Harry Winston’s Midnight Feathers series uses a marquetry of brown and black domestic goose feathers on its dial, giving it a surprising wood-like striping, while La Montre Hermès offers a dial in porcelain de Sèvres hand-painted by a Japanese master artisan and featuring the famous Kyoto horse race.

The world of watches had never had it so good.