Horological Meandering

All together for the first time

 

I'm not sure why, but my watches and I have never all been in the same place at the same time before and, for various reasons, they are today. I thought I should mark the occasion, before winding everything up and setting the calendars, by taking a picture, though unfortunately the resolution/lighting/steady hand combination means that it's hard to see the detail...

For those of you who aren't good at guessing blurs and who want to know what the various pieces are, I've taken a simple wrist-shot of each and explain its place in the collection (not the Sinclair Harding, though), in the order I acquired them. If the collection itself has a theme, it is 'breadth'. A breadth of complications (though a rattrapante is a glaring omission), a breadth of styles, a breadth of metals (and non-metals, too), a breadth of manufactures (I have a 'one piece per brand' limit) and a breadth of feels and occasions on which they can be worn. You will see that one of the watches is an imposter in this structure, but I bought it because I really like it...

I start with a simple dive watch, which is of limited horological interest, but means a lot to me. My now wife bought this for me soon after we met with money she didn’t have (or, rather, a credit card she couldn't afford to service) and spent a year paying it off. This is a mid-size Seamaster pro, which I think works better with the dial than the full-sized version and means less empty space around the movement. The combination of polished stainless bezel and wave-shaped blue guilloche dial means this works with a suit as well as being a reliable beach piece

Next up is the watch I got married in, an Audemas Piguet Classique Quantieme Perpetuel in yellow gold. This has the automatic perpetual version of the 2120 calibre, and I think is the ultimate understated perpetual: a combination of the thinness of the calibre and the stepped/bevelled case means that it wears incredibly thinly, there is no leap year indicator (you just know that the watch knows) and the dial/sub-dial/hands in different metals is classic and subtle. My only complaint would be that the movement is quite fragile from a setting perspective.

I have a number of chronographs, but this Blancpain (Villeret grande date chrono in WG) is the only dress chronograph, and it is one of very few two dial chronos that dispenses with the running seconds dial to ensure the full 12 hours can be measured without needing a third dial. The combination of this with the grande date and the elegant case (albeit thickness is a bit high) means that I think this is a much underrated piece.

Staying with white gold but moving to a simpler complication, this Chopard LUC 16/1860/2  with the 1.96 calibre is a real value-for-money beauty. The sunburst guilloche and dauphine hands reminds me of a Simplicity and, while the movement is not of Dufour quality, it is nonetheless beautifully finished.

This Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso Geographique was made as a limited 500 edition run and, so far as I know, the calibre was never used in another model. I love everything about this watch: the proportions of this grande taille reverso are just right, the two dials have very different feels (the silver dial is elegant and restrained, while the black side is as sexy and feminine as a dial can reasonably be), the night and day indicator features a stunning sun, and the dual time/dual face concept works really well in practical terms.

Moving from dual time to world time, for me the Patek 5110P stands alone. Patek just owns the world time complication and, of its modern examples, the 5110 has better proportions for me and a better dial than the variants that have succeeded it. While I wanted to be happy with one of the gold variants, the dials can't match the magnificence of the the blue dial of the platinum piece, so that is the one I had to have.

The world spinning gives us our timezones, but the UN Astrolabium takes that a step further with the world spinning in the cosmos, and a multitude of complications – some of which are actually surprisingly useful, though I confess to rarely having a need to know where Antares is in the sky in the middle of the day! This version of the AGG, with the day indicator, the ‘normal’ lugs and the see-through case-back, is much my favourite – and I think the proportions and look are better in yellow gold than the slightly larger platinum version in the Trilogy of Time series (though that would be a set to own…)

At this stage in my collecting, I was ready to go for some more casual/sports pieces to partner the Omega. First up, I’d always had a soft spot for the workhorse IWC chronos. I toyed with getting a Doppel but decided this wasn’t the piece to have as my split second (one day I’ll get the Double Split, but the GBP needs to recover a bit before that happens!) and the standard pilot watch feels like the poor relation. By contrast, this version of the Aquatimer (the internal bezel is a must for me – I don’t like the newer versions), brings the dive function and a rubber strap, and in steel this works well for me – the titanium versions look much less elegant, and the split-minutes watch, which is Ti only, also loses the day and date, which I find very useful on a casual watch.

Hot on the heels of the IWC came a Panerai, which for years I’d convinced myself I didn’t see the appeal of as a brand. However, the Panerai 317 is a great watch. The ceramic Luminor case is super-cool as well as being scratch-resistant and the movement is in-house and quite complex (GMT, monopusher chrono, day and night indicator, eight day power reserve); and, because I have the first K-series, the movement has a PVD coating to it, which I admire at least in part because it sounds like it was incredibly difficult to make work, as well as looking awesome. This Panerai can work under a suit or in a club, but its natural habitat is on holiday. Not only does the GMT function prove useful here but the 8-day linear power reserve indicator doubles up as a gauge to show how much longer you are away for (assuming you’re on a one-week break). Genius.

From holiday watches I then returned to higher complications though, as this phase in my collecting was fifteen years after I had started, there was more budget so the complications were more extreme. The Haldimann H1 is a remarkable watch, and just by tucking up my shirt cuff a little, the dance of the tourbillon can bring beauty to even the most tedious meeting. My version has the dark dial, which can be everything from deep black through anthracite and, when the light catches it, sparklingly bright. A big part of the appeal of this watch is that it is both very complex and very simple, and the fact that it was one man who thought it up and then made it himself (with only a small team of helpers) makes it very special.

Repeaters have never much interested me, as the ones I could afford have never sounded quite right to me (in a world where the top end of something is often about nearly imperceptible differences, the vast majority of repeaters still don’t manage to combine the right volume, speed, tone and echo, indicating how hard it is to make a good one). Sonneries, being even harder to make and even more expensive to buy, interested me even less from a buying perspective. But then I don’t own any vintage pieces, or any pocket watches – and a pocket watch repeater is cheaper than a wristwatch one (other things being equal), and with more physical volume can often sound better. And the idea of a Grande et Petite Sonnerie pocket watch (which is what I have), with sound better than any but the very finest watches (if at all), made over a hundred years ago by someone without any computer or even calculator to aid the design – well, that was rather fascinating. And so I bought this example. I pretty much never wear it, but having it sat on the desk in my home office, ticking and chiming the seconds and quarters and hours, is incredibly relaxing.

At this point, the collection was complete (minus the Double Split).  There wasn’t really anything else that I was interested in from a complications perspective and I have a watch for every occasion. And then I went and bought a JLC Extreme Lab Chrono 2. This fails my one watch per manufacture test (I already have the Reverso Geographique), the Panerai 317 also has a GMT plus chrono plus power reserve,  and letting it into the collection just because it adds a Titanium case or skeleton dial seems ridiculous. But I really, really like it, so I bought it anyway. And, like all my other watches, it makes me smile, which is what this is all about.

Thanks for reading.
S

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