Quill & Pad
If you follow the world of independent watchmaking, by now you’ve almost certainly heard of watchmaker Rexhep Rexhepi and his Akrivia watches. Since arriving on the scene in 2012 with its first tourbillon-based watch, Akrivia has continued to delight. But is this independent bound for glory? GaryG predicts the future.
Quill & Pad
One of IWC’s most emblematic timepieces, the Portugieser chronograph has been a cornerstone of the brand’s collection for many years. The Portugieser, which first appeared back in 1939, has not always been a bestseller. The truth is, IWC failed with three separate launches before the Portugieser finally became a success in the early 1990s. Sabine Zwettler shares a brief history of the Portugieser here and introduces the six new chronograph variations powered by an in-house movement.
Quill & Pad
Clare Valley winemaker Jim Barry has teamed up with one of the most famous German producers, Dr. Loosen, to form a new joint venture called LoosenBarry. It currently offers two blends of Rieslings: one using Mosel grapes but made in the Australian style, while the other Riesling comes from Clare Valley grapes, but made in the German style. And the results are in!
Quill & Pad
Watch spotting on celebrity wrists can be a lot of fun if you’re watching a movie or TV show. Oh, who is Elizabeth kidding? It’s always a lot of fun. Here she shares five watches that caught her eye on the wrists of celebrities over the last couple of weeks.
Quill & Pad
And we have a winner for our February 29 Leap Year competition: find out here how one lucky Quill & Pad reader will soon be receiving her new Gorilla Fastback GT Bandit!
Quill & Pad
Ian Skellern's feelings regarding the rapid series of announcements of watch events like the cancellation of Watches & Wonders and Baselworld as well as the full-steam-ahead project Geneva Watch Days have been equally quickly undulating: from initially being enthusiastically for, Ian ended feeling against Geneva Watch Days. Why put anyone’s health at risk, especially with perhaps little in return but a few photos and a persistent cough? But it is a tough call.
Quill & Pad
What makes an enamel dial so magical? That is the question Martin Green asked himself when presented with the new version of the Classique Tourbillon Extra-Plat Automatique with a blue oven-fired enamel dial that Breguet recently launched. You may enjoy the answer he came up with.
Quill & Pad
A visit to Texas offered Elizabeth Doerr a surprise: she came across a very large painting simply entitled 'Watch' at the Dallas Museum of Art. Further inquiry into its painter, Gerald Murphy, revealed a fun historical anecdote and a bit of a mystery. Why did Murphy paint a giant Cubist impression of two watches in 1925, and which watches were they?
Quill & Pad
The perpetual calendar is often the perfect way for watch manufactures to show off craftsmanship and ability, but how brands do this varies. Here Elizabeth Doerr highlights five very different perpetual calendars introduced in 2019, just in time for the leap year turn on February 29, 2020.
Quill & Pad
RJ Watches - formerly known as Romain Jérôme - has declared bankruptcy with immediate effect. Elizabeth Doerr takes a brief look at the 16-year run of this quirky boutique brand, its design-focused existence having formed an interesting tribute to the power (and limits) of marketing.
Quill & Pad
The news broke like a hurricane on the morning of February 27, 2020: Watches & Wonders (formerly SIHH) has been canceled for 2020. In the words of Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe, “The future of the fairs is already in the balance – to cancel them is really bad news for them, and for Baselworld in particular." Read on for more of his opinion.
Quill & Pad
To celebrate its 65th anniversary, Corum invited a few people to its manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds to look at some lovely vintage pieces and talk about what the brand has meant to the history of watchmaking. Elizabeth Doerr shares her visit, and visuals, here.
Quill & Pad
Zacapa was one of the first rums ever to convince Ken Gargett that there was serious life in the category outside the ubiquitous "Bundy." He doesn't think that it will be long before people think of the best rums alongside other premium spirits, and Zacapa is one of the foremost proponents of this movement.
Quill & Pad
As a fan of the classic 1950s and 1960s Omega Constellations, Colin Smith had always dismissed Omega’s 1982 reworking of its flagship model, known as the Constellation Manhattan, as something of an aberration from the “true” Constellation concept. His “road to Damascus” moment occurred recently when he saw a 36 mm black-dial co-axial chronometer on display at an Omega dealer in Bordeaux.
Quill & Pad
Everything Greubel Forsey does is about nurturing incredible skill, craftsmanship, and a fundamental belief in patience. This rings doubly true for the Hand Made 1. It looks absolutely perfect from every angle, and the experience is magnified when you realize that not only is this watch completely hand finished (the norm for Greubel Forsey) but wrought from scratch by an individual’s hands.
Quill & Pad
It's a leap year, and thanks to our friends at Gorilla Watches, that means it's time to win a watch. On February 29, 2020 we will be drawing the winner of a Gorilla Fastback GT Bandit. Read on to enter and perhaps even win this easy scavenger hunt. But hurry, this doesn't happen every day (or year)!
Quill & Pad
The date: January 13, 2012. The place: Glashütte, Germany, where one of GaryG's best friends had arranged for the two of them to visit A. Lange & Söhne. The vision: his friend extended his arm from the sleeve of his shirt, and what Gary saw left him reeling – his first view of the Lange Datograph Perpetual in white gold. He was confident from that very moment that this was a watch for him, but pursuit of the piece took four long years.
Quill & Pad
Incoming! If there’s a happier word in the watch enthusiast’s vernacular, GaryG is not sure what it is. After several months in the queue, he recently received the happy news that his Model 17.06 Monolith from the Ming Watches team had arrived. Here he shares why he bought it and what he thinks of it after wearing for several months.
Quill & Pad
Given Panerai’s origins in Florence, it should come as no surprise that the Italian watchmaker created a horological tribute to the insatiably curious father of modern science Galileo Galilei, who was once a resident of the Renaissance city. The Jupiterium is a one-of-a-kind geocentric planetarium with perpetual calendar.
Quill & Pad
SIHH 2019 provided an instructive example to Tim Mosso of architecture’s low-key role in watch design relative to well-worn tropes. For him it was the third year in a row that parts of Geneva’s Palexpo felt like a Southern California cars-and-coffee event. But there are a few watch brands that do architecture well, and Tim takes a closer look at some of them here.
Quill & Pad
Place Vendôme has always held an extraordinary attraction for Martin Green: he cannot visit the French capital without going there. The square is occupied by hôtel particuliers, or historical city townhouses, which served as homes and offices to some of the richest and most influential families in France. And while their façades are homogeneous, what's behind them is not: one of the magical places there is the Jaeger-LeCoultre boutique at 7 Place Vendôme.
Quill & Pad
Well, here we are in February 2020: a leap year. Which means that for the first time in four years we will have a February 29. This is one of those times that has watch enthusiasts with perpetual calendars anxiously checking their watches for the leap from February 28 to 29 and then on to March 1. Here are five perpetual calendars perfect for watching the date “leap” into action.
Quill & Pad
According to Joshua Munchow the sleeper of horological complications is the dead seconds, or jumping seconds, function. And, according to him, no one does it better than A. Lange & Söhne as evidenced by the Richard Lange Jumping Seconds model. Follow him on a deep dive of this unusual watch right here.
Quill & Pad
Jaeger-LeCoultre supports ‘The Supermarket Of Images,’ the latest exhibition at the Jeu de Paume arts center in Paris, which exhibits and promotes all forms of mechanical and electronic imagery. The exhibition’s central premise is that our lives are increasingly saturated with images. The impact of this is the story that this exhibition tells.
Quill & Pad
GaryG once wrote on Quill & Pad about his relationship with the world’s greatest mass luxury brand in 'Why I’ve Never Owned a Rolex – And Why I Might Yet.' Well, to know him is to know that if he says he “might yet” buy something it’s likely only a matter of time. So, too, with this Rolex: the GMT Master II BLNR “Batman” with black-and-blue bezel.
Quill & Pad
Dedicated ladies’ watches are a relatively surprising turn of direction for Zenith, which has primarily concentrated on men’s watches up to now. Elizabeth Doerr takes a look at the fresh new feminine additions of the Zenith Defy Midnight And Elite Classic collections for 2020.
Quill & Pad
The awesome Greubel Forsey Art Piece Edition Historique is a true coalescence of a decade and a half of horological exploration into something stunningly simple and complicated all at once. Joshua Munchow explains why.
Quill & Pad
For the Michel Perchin Model #1, designer and brand owner Patrick Pinkston works with a well-versed goldsmith workshop in the United Kingdom that he describes as “literally fabricating one case at a time.” There, each 36 x 55 mm white gold case is hand-finished and engraved. What else makes this independently crafted timepiece notable? Nancy Olson has the full story.
Quill & Pad
Breguet launches the Classique Dame Reference 9065 in time to celebrate Valentine’s Day and the season of love, but rest assured this watch is the right choice any time. Martin Green thinks that's largely due to the Tahitian mother-of-pearl dial, but there's much more to this colorful delight as he explains here.
Quill & Pad
Nothing happens quickly in the whisky industry, but Ken Gargett thinks that the future is looking bright for Glenglassaugh and it should take its place among the elite producers. And then there's that superlative malt from 1965 that Ken recommends "to be sipped on bended knee."
Question, suggestion, or just want to say hi? Drop a note.