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While watching television, Ian Skellern spied a Kudoke Real Skeleton in a feature film called 'Last Looks' starring Charlie Hunnam and Mel Gibson. That watch is now being auctioned in New York in December. Here's its backstory.
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Now we are onto the big bad boys of the GPHG. Mechanical Exception is where we put the most mechanically incredible watches head to head, and the name of the game is horological creativity. Aesthetics help but a wild, avant-garde watch can easily win this category because there is no limit. So how does our panel choose?
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Chantilly may be known for its famous whipped cream, lace, and horse racing, but since 2014 this town in northern France, an hour’s drive from Paris, has played host to the most beautiful cars on the planet at Chantilly Arts & Elegance Richard Mille, a car lover’s garden party uniting both classic and contemporary cars.
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Sabine Zwettler dives back through time to have a closer look at five vintage-style diver’s watches. With their robustness and air of discovery and adventure, diver’s watches leave a striking impression on the wrist – whether on dry land or in the water.
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Fellows auction house is still something of a hidden gem, so if you look hard you might find incredible bargains. The author herself has gotten very lucky here, once even managing to find a timepiece that she had long been searching for at an unpredictably good price. See what you can find in the next timed auction!
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Ferdinand Berthoud was known for passing on his knowledge, taking in his first apprentice shortly after he opened his first workshop, which resulted in H.M.8, a fantastically accurate ship's chronometer. The new FB 2RSM.2-1 is the modern spiritual successor to the H.M.8 and it originated with a modern apprentice.
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Astronomical complications are poetic in nature, more emotional than practical. Calendar complications are the exact opposite: perfectly practical and useful complications for time management. Since the category doesn’t dictate specifically what should be valued and only outlines what fits into the category, it leaves a lot up to our panel on what we subjectively value more and why in this latest round table of 2022 GPHG nominations.
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GaryG represented Quill & Pad at the 2022 DWW Horology Forum in New York (and he took a few favorite watches with him). Here's his take on the weekend event with lots of photos.
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Five of the six watches in this Tourbillon category are either openworked or dial-less, so their visuals are not dissimilar. Five of the six are also one-minute tourbillons. One-half of the finalists have flying tourbillons, while another boasts a cylindrical tourbillon, and yet another has a constant-force tourbillon. How will our panel ever choose a winner?
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Watch collector Perry Heim has waited long enough, maybe we all have, for the perfect Bulgari Octo Finissimo. And it's almost here, bar one small missing element. Perry explains what the Octo Finissimo still needs to scratch his itch.
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The GPHG Iconic category honors models with real staying power, requiring them to have had a lasting influence as a collection for more than 20 years. Our panel doesn't like the category, but it sure does have a unanimous winner.
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Time to Race, Louis Moinet’s latest edition to the Memoris chronograph line, made quite an impression on Martin Green. For this colorful Memoris, Louis Moinet drove down memory lane right into car history with a very cool concept.
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The Watches TV has a popular series called “Walkthrough” in which Marc André Deschoux and his camera team film as they walk around an artisan’s workshop. In this episode, Deschoux and team visit the downtown Geneva atelier of independent sensation Akrivia with founder Rexhep Rexhepi.
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Now that we’ve reached the Men’s Complication category, we start hitting Joshua Munchow's favorite part of the GPHG: mechanical awesomeness. See what our panel has to say about the watches in this category and which watch we think is the best unisex timepiece of 2022!
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The Charles Joguet winery is in Chinon, France where it sits adjacent to the Vienne River, a tributary of the Loire. What makes Chinon different from the rest of the Loire Valley is its focus on red wines from the Cabernet Franc grape. And Ken Gargett has a lot to say about this!
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The Men’s is one of the more contentious GPHG categories every year because it is filled with amazing watches that may or may not have much in common but do have distinctive aesthetics. Since that is very subjective, our panel is reminded that the category is essentially asking which watch is the most versatile, wearable, and appeals to the broadest demographic. And, yet, our peanut gallery is divided practically down the middle!
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For this Virtuoso V, Bovet opted for a salmon-colored lacquered dial without a guilloche motif. What could have been a vast, pink-colored wasteland becomes a beautiful oasis as this charismatic hue works so beautifully with the other elements of this interesting convertible timepiece.
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In 2019 we ran an interesting four-part series by Tim Mosso of Watchbox fame detailing the history, present, and future of Rolex movements. Tim put hours and hours’ worth of research into this oeuvre, and now we thought it well worth drawing your attention to this series again in case you missed it first time around. Enjoy!
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Joshua Munchow became somewhat informed about gemstones and related techniques in studying for the jewelry-heavy Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève categories we discuss annually. This new information has sparked a significant amount of passion for the topic, leaving him wanting to share some of what he’s learned about one of the most beautiful sides of haute horology: gems and their settings.
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The best thing about these six GPHG 2022 Ladies’ Complication watches is the variety of complications. Yes, we still have two traditional tourbillons, but the other four complications are anything but traditional. But, our panel asks, why are the tourbillons for ladies not competing in the main tourbillon category?
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Sustainability might be a buzzword right now, but there is good reason for it. If we as a race don’t change how we’re going about our existence our planet will die. Or at least humanity will. So what is the watch industry doing about it? Watch Forum 2022 was a grandiose start.
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Quill & Pad's peanut gallery round tables kick off with six very different watches that have been shortlisted in the Ladies’ category of the 2022 Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève.
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In 'No Time to Die,' James Bond once again saved the world, this time with an Omega Seamaster Diver 300M Co-Axial Master Chronometer 007 Edition on his wrist. Martin Green had all the details.
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The first Watches and Culture Watch Forum to take place since 2018 kicked off with one of the most emotional pieces of filmmaking Elizabeth Doerr has perhaps ever seen: 'Bigger Than Us,' a documentary by the captivating French writer and filmmaker Flore Vasseur, which explores the (non-) survival of our planet through the stories of seven young people who became activists in seven different areas as early as the age of six.
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Nancy Olson always look forward to the introduction of Montblanc’s annual Writers Edition pen collection, which has honored writers from William Shakespeare to Ernest Hemingway since 1992. In 2022 Montblanc pays homage to the Brothers Grimm.
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Jewelry watches, especially high jewelry models, rarely become icons. The exceptions to these rules are few and far between, but the Bulgari Serpenti is one. And the latest high jewelry version is just sublime with its mechanical movement!
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A panel discussing sustainable innovations may sound quite boring, but when Elizabeth Doerr watched this panel that ran during Watches and Wonders 2022 after the fact, she was fascinated. And she thinks you might be too.
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The Vanguart Black Hole Tourbillon concept is based on the concept of a black hole, a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, even light. While that and the levitating flying tourbillon that emerges from the center of this watch might be enough to wow anyone, there's still more: a joystick that controls the direction of time and this watch's great looks.
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Oh, those Geneva auctions! While GaryG's intention is usually to browse the rare pieces on offer, gain an education from his auction-house friends and escape unscathed, it seems that more often than not there is a piece that puts him into bidding mode. And sometimes that piece is entirely unanticipated as was the case of the Vacheron & Constantin Reference 4560 triple calendar that he stumbled across at a Sotheby’s preview. Here is why he bought it.
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The third edition of the sunny, COVID-19-friendly Geneva Watch Days came to a close on September 2, so of course we must talk about it. And this time we brought our friends Robert-Jan Broer of Fratello and Łukasz Doskocz of CH24! Please join this Quill & Pad round table discussion of what we did and didn’t like at Geneva Watch Days 2022.
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