Horological Meandering

bernard cheong
7182

• Show profile
• Show other posts

Coming up for air #5 The 8 books of good watches (In memory of Gunther Blumlein)

The 8 books of good watches (In memory of Gunther Blumlein)

With great respect, and sadness, the memory of Gunther Blumlein, is that of cold champagne in Dresden, and arguments that overlapping dials will make a Lange a Breguet...and that Lange 1 will not have luminous materials.

Those were the days in 1998, when watches were 38.5 and way too big ?!?

You can’t kiss a dead man’s ass, but you can thank those who are still alive..to Rolf Schnyder, Gerald Roden and Max Busser..thank you for being my friends.

Basel being around the corner..#5 is something I prepared, after getting the HM1 and seeing the UN Moonstruck.

This #5 is for you guys…

1998, around a long supper table…

Many friends, and often journalists, have often asked “why and how I pick my favorite watches.”

There were many answers, but for the PURISTS…there is but one:

Well, a watch is like a book, a good book. There are “text” books for facts and refrences..like Patek Philippe and Dufour, and Kari. There are books of poetry like Vianney. There are erotic and stimulating writings like Ulysse Nardin. There are provocative and mind bending intellectual works that go above my own head like Max Busser’s concept of a cooperative work.

These are my eight good books.

I have learnt much from them.

Like poetry, they are read again and again..each time with a different color of emotion. I wear them as such, and think of them like such.

Pateks, IWCs, Vacherons are text books, and like text books, they are references and “guidelines” as to what is proper and correct. Artisan in spirit. The spirit however, is not lost in text books. That is not my experience. However, there is much more spirit, more soul, more discovery beyond the text books, the school yard, the classrooms and the halls of our Universities and colleges.

I was NEVER a classroom boy, never a prefect, never a monitor. I was almost always the kid at the back of the room, drawing..talking, reading comic books, even Playboy and Penthouse in the 1960s.

The playground of our minds, is also the work place of our souls.

I may have asked then, not what the watch can do for me, but…what can I learn from owning it, will it improve the way I look at things, and at people, how they think and feel.

These are insights I gathered ONLY NOW in retrospect. I was then not able to have a deep command, or awareness of my own amygdala or whatever primal brain, to intentionally BUY or CHOOSE my watches this way.

So..what is a really important book to read..about watch collecting, and getting a life from it?

Read this one!

“You don’t have to XXXX people over to survive.” It’s like my series here on “air”…a collection of both drawings, graffiti, street art and photos. Some words. Lots of grass ( I guess).

  picture w/ expletive removed

For what it’s worth…

Here are my personal thoughts.

The Freak is very special.

It taught me about Rolf Schnyder, wisdom and hard work in the old way. The old fashioned way.

Hard work by Rolf Schnyder, and about making friends. About humility.

The Antiqua taught me to believe in myself. I liked the Antiqua, way back in 1998 or further back. I believed in teaching myself not to value objects for their dollar worth, or to imagine “how else” I can make more money.

I believed then to enjoy life by learning how to improve my mind, by making friends, by seeing things from other’s eyes.

The Opus V taught me confidence. Confidence that I could be right, and not to rub it in.

The IWC Skeletal repeater taught me patience. To wait, to save, to predict. It taught me the value and satisfaction of “completeness”. It taught me that there was a path to make an object that would defy strict rules of values, and win.

A repeater that demonstrated not a loud sound, which was and is of standard value, but of visual harmony and good tone. Value placed in reliable engineering, the bug bear of many repeaters.

The HM1 taught me humility. Fundamentally, as a person, I was/am a “work in progress”. This watch, this NEW and current HM1 was a journey…a long one. From the first HM1, to this one. It is the most beautiful watch I own.

The Swatch Carousel is a lesson that to be a watch collector, I must not be a snob. The watch is a great thing. It costs money to make. It is undervalued. Woody Allen “You see this watch?” Pointing to the watch on his wrist,” On his deathbed, my grandfather…he SOLD it to me.”

The Goldpfeil taught me that there is sooo much beauty in so many people, so much good, but it is very hard to find these qualities.

The Gefica introduced me to Gerald Roden, and it taught me a lesson in COURAGE. A quality I “thought” I had. Gerald Roden is a man I admire, and I wish I had met EARLIER. The creation of the Gefica, how I first saw it, the publicity, the reception, the way the watch lives on today…the memories.

I hope that many of you, my friends, will also look at a watch like a book, a piece of poetry even.

Keep it, remember it, share it.

Maybe..don't give the watches to your kids..Patek is wrong.

Sell it to them.

Thanks you for reading and enjoy the world as it unfolds for each of us, and our children.

Dr Bernard Cheong

24^th March 2009

  The rest of #4,3,2 and 1 can be found by first going to #4 here:

http://ahci.watchprosite.com/show-forumpost/fi-16/pi-3057201/ti-506241/s-0/

 

edited out expletives in accordance with forum guidelines

This message has been edited by bernard cheong on 2009-03-24 09:01:55