Horological Meandering

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Fantasy watch review challenge

A post a little while ago by Art Collector (“3 watches that sing to me”) made me ponder that oft-considered rhetorical question “what is the minimum number of high-end watches that could represent a forever collection?”.

Even assuming an exemption for relatively low-cost fun watches, of which part of the point may be to have several, my conclusion was that, were I not cash constrained, I would still come in at four. However,  it was also clear that, while three of my four watches exist (though I own none of them, alas), the fourth does not.

I therefore thought it might be fun to describe an ideal watch of some sort, in the form of a critical review, albeit with some requirement (loose, as you’ll see below) for implementation constraints. Apologies that, though writing a good review seems easy, by trying to do one I found that it is not.

My challenge to the community, therefore, is to articulate - with pictures if you can - what you’d like to see in a wristwatch that does not exist but conceivably could (so not a grande et petite sonnerie/rattrapante/triple-axis-tourbillon/etc in a 37mmx8mm case made of splinters of the true cross, nor a Richard Mille that is actually lighter than air…).

It could be just a different colour of dial or new strap option, or the simple removal of a date window on an otherwise beautiful timepiece, or a complete rethink of something that isn’t made today. The only constraint I’m suggesting is that it needs to something that could actually/probably be produced..

#4 has elements of a world-timer, a GMT, a repeater and an alarm watch, with a perpetual calendar added to wash it all down. To give context of what I like in this field, watches that I own that offer one or more elements of this currently include a Patek 5110p, a Panerai 317K, a JLC Reverso Geographique, a JLC Extreme Lab Chrono 2 (in TiVan), an AP Edward Piguet Carillon Minute Repeater and an AP Classique quantieme perpetuelle; I don’t own an alarm watch. None of these covers all my requirements, and neither does any other watch regardless of price, so all need to be replaced in the below.

There are broadly three roles  for watches that I use when overseas or considering the time in different places: (1) would be a watch for business, for taking on a work trip somewhere overseas, with all that entails; (2) would be a watch to use for knowing what the time is In other parts of the world, whether or not I’m away from home myself and (3) would be the watch for being on holiday with when I may or may not care what the time is somewhere else.

In an extreme case of the last of these, a watch is not required, any more than shoes or a phone. One might take  a dive watch or something to know meal-times and, In this case, I rely on the universal ‘fun watch” exemption (see second para) – this watch doesn’t need to solve that problem, but it does need to solve the first two use cases and the third in all but the most extreme scenarios. To be more precise, then, I want it to:

1.       Tell me the time where I am and where I need to know it is, quickly and without needing mental gymnastics or to take the watch off and look at the back to do so

2.       Let me see different times across the world at a glance and connect those times with particular places

3.       Be able to deal with non-integral-hour time-zones. I’ve never been to Newfoundland and don’t really feel I will, but India is the world’s most populous nation (and fifth in GDP) so I can’t be unable to know the time there

4.       I am likely to be travelling through airports with limited luggage and using various hotels with iffy safes so I only want to take one watch with me. I therefore need to be able to wear the watch 24 hours a day, and on a beach/pool, in an office or at a dressy evening out if needed

5.       I can be disoriented when far from home – and asleep at the wrong moment – so need to be reminded of important times, and also of what day it is

6.       I may inadvertently find myself somewhere I wouldn’t go at home; an attention-grabbing ‘please rob me and beat me to death’ sign on the wrist is unappealing but, equally, this needs to hold its own without shame under a double-cuff

7.       Any of my fantasy cornerstone watches must have beauty, craftsmanship and that soul-moving magic.

It is worth saying that no watch does all these today (I'm pretty sure, though happy to be proven wrong), or even most of them. So, in view of that, how do I view the new piece unique PF ‘Tonda Total Time’ (for the avoidance of doubt, Parmigiani had nothing to do with this ‘fan fiction piece’ and I apologise if it offends anyone; anything here is my own fantasy, albeit if Michel did ever make this work I’d buy it off him in a heart-beat)? The answer, as you might expect, is that this is the first and only watch that hits all of my requirements.

In terms of complications, it combines a world-time display with three dedicated displayed time zones (2 of them permitting non-integral difference to GMT), the first wristwatch alarm I know of whose alert is the alarm time played on a carillon minute repeater with cathedral chimes, and a perpetual calendar, all on a single-sided dial for ease of reference. This is housed within a not-immodestly-sized (42mm x 15mm) integrated bracelet sports watch, with a rather arresting enamel-and-guilloche layered dial on the front and an elegant movement (with micro-rotor) visible through the sapphire case-back. Since I can’t do even a cursory job at a movement design here, we will only show the front of the watch.

Case

This watch has very specific requirements that mean that I think only the Parmigiani Tonda of watches made today could satisfy it. Condition #4 mean that the watch needs either a bracelet (ideal) or a rubber strap (maybe); nothing else is going to work if I’m to wear this in a pool or the shower, and ideally I need a bracelet to allow for potential heat and to be dressy enough for the office.

The Tonda is the ideal choice here, since: (a) an integrated bracelet sports watch is just the way to go; (b) condition #6 means I’m ruling out a rapper’s Nautilus or Royal Oak and (c) in any case, the amount going on in the dial mean we need a slim bezel. On the last of these, a 42mm RO or Nautilus has (I believe) a 65-75% dial-to-total-width ratio. With the Tonda, we can see closer to 90% (the polished bezel section above the knurled ring in the rest of the Tonda range has been removed here, which I think makes it look better, too – again, apologies to the original designer.)

This is probably the only prestigious integrated-bracelet that would have worked, in my view: moving beyond RO/Nautilus, the Vacheron Overseas has the elegance but lacks the thin bezel (and, personally, I don’t like the bracelet, though I do appreciate the strap-change options); the GP Laureato and Chopard Alpine Eagle are too Genta-derivative (I’ll pull out the pin now and run away!), the Czazpek looks too utilitarian to me (sorry!!) and Moser/Bivet et al just don’t make it on the grid for me.

The case we are using as a base for design and sizing purposes is the Tonda PF Split-Seconds Chronograph (see below, though the case and bracelet in that watch are platinum whereas here we’re titanium). This means 42mm diameter – very manageable – and the 15mm height is not unreasonable considering the layered dial and levels of complication. 

The titanium construction of both case and band (noting that titanium is a first for the Tonda PF collection)  means that, even with a bracelet, this is a watch that can be worn day and night and wherever you need to. That titanium is great for repeaters is also a bonus

I personally think that the Tonda PF case has the elegance of a Royal Oak/Nautilus/Overseas without being as obvious, or stealable, and yet it can be dressed up or dressed down depending. YMMV.

Functionality

As Nico’s assessment of the PP5110 and JLC UTT makes clear, there can be a distinction between a watch that allows someone to know the time anywhere in the world and one that allows travel to be managed. World-timers, like my 5110, do the former well, and are passable at the latter, whereas a dedicated multi-time-zone watch is better at the latter but worse at the former

So I want both a world time indication (“what is the time anywhere?”) and a multiple time-zone function (“what is it here and there?”) and there is value to me in having the most important zones easy to read at a glance. Jacob & Co has produced four zones, while Franck Muller is famed for three and most make do with two. For me, I want to know the time where I am (when I travel), the time at home (so I can speak to my family) but I can also see value in knowing the time in one other location - that could be the parent company location (boring), the location of a wayward loved-one  or just a third place of importance.

The TTT gives three time-zones displayed by triangles pointing to a world-time 24 hour (graded) scale. This allows the wearer to read (1) The time at home (H); (2) the local time (L) wherever they are, and (3) the time at another reference (R) time-zone. The home time needs to be one of the 24 ‘traditional’ time zones, which is fine for me as I live in one, but the other two (L and R) can be any time difference from home time.

Situating these times on the world-time dial makes for the ability both to see individual priority times and also the traditional world-time run of 24 city times (so up to 26 potential time zones in total!), and to read these across a map of the northern hemisphere, which rotates once a day in time with the world-time disc.

Although a perpetual calendar is in evidence, much of it is hidden: there is no month or leap-year indicator, as these are only needed for setting and not for reading – we may forget the day or the date, but we generally know the month. Instead, there is just a day aperture at 12 o’clock and a big date double-window at six, with month and leap year visible through the back (as with the Panerai Calendario Perpetuo, though without the year display – see below). 

Needless to say, the day/date can be advanced backwards and forwards using the pushers, without fear of damaging the movement even when it is close to midnight.

If multiple time zones is our first set of complications, and the calendar function the second, the third is a carillon minute repeater (which I just prefer the ‘tune’ of versus a standard MR), chiming on a cathedral gong. Like the Patek 5531, this always runs to local time. However, unlike the 5531, the repeater on this watch is connected to an alarm function; the repeater plays the actual time either when the activator is pressed if the alarm Is off or, provided it has been charged by pressing the activator when the alarm is set to ‘on’, the repeater sounds the time in question at that designated alarm time, rather than a generic chime. I think this materially adds to the value of a repeater in a travel watch.

Dial and hands/indices

The dial is something of a let-down in the pictures here (I’m not a graphics person) but would, of course, be quite something in the metal. It consists of four concentric rings/circles, in contrasting materials and finishes.

The centre, both literally and figuratively, is an enamelled stereographic projection of the Earth, centred on the North Pole, and it represents a real step-up in my view in quality from, say, the UN Tellurium (see below) to which it has some similarities. The map rotates, as does the city ring, when the local time or home time-zone are adjusted, though it is fixed as time advances for a given time zone.

Outside the map is the only completely fixed part of the dial, a black ring that serves to anchor the hour markers and the four aperture windows at 3, 6, 9 and 12 o’clock. The hour markers follow the same style as used elsewhere in the Tonda range, but have inset lume – potentially less elegant than pure gold, as generally used in this range, but more fitting when one might need to see the time at night in a strange hotel room. The ring itself also uses the same black guilloche as seen in other PF models.

The four apertures show the day of the week at and a big-date function at 6, while the 9 o’clock window shows a musical note when the alarm function is activated, and the same with a strike through it when in non-alarm/repeater mode, under which circumstances the minute repeater will operate. Lastly, at 3 o’clock, the mode of crown and button operation is shown, which will be explained in the next section.

Outside this fixed ring is the city list, which is finished in the sand-blasted white finish of the Tonda split-seconds dial, featuring a dot by each city for accurate reading (I couldn’t draw this - sorry). Having all cities in a single ring (without two cities’ depth) does increase the ease of reading each city compared to a stacked arrangement, but necessitates three letter abbreviations for the cities (as with my JLC RG). My sense is that this increases rather than decreasing readability, but others may take a different view.

Beyond this is a sunken ring indicating the time. This ring shows the 24 hour clock, with a five minute subdivision scale marked on the dial (again not shown on this design prototype). 12 and 24 are replaced by a golden sun and silver moon respectively, which are hand-engraved and rather lovely. By putting the time at the outer edge of the dial, and adding the five minute sub-scales (not shown), relatively accurate reading of the time is possible.

All world-timers must decide whether the city and time should be read from the top or the bottom of the city dial. In general, I prefer to read from the top (as with my Patek 5110p), but the central map disc necessitates that the time should be read from the bottom if a later time is to be shown to the right of the current time, as convention dictates, unless a southern hemisphere view is to be taken, which I don’t want. As an aside, the UN Tellurium mentioned earlier cheats in this regard (unless I’ve misunderstood it), showing a top-reading time with a northern hemisphere disc – this means that if one tried to use the map to read the time, New York appears to have a later time than London – see below! 

Unlike most 24 hour discs that divide the 24 hours into day (6:00-18:00hrs) and night (18:00-6:00hrs), the TTT adopts a tripartite structure. 21:30-6:30 are enamelled a dark blue, to represent night, 09:00-18:00 are a sand colour, to represent the working day, when it might be appropriate to contact someone working, while 06:30-09:00 and 18:00-21:30 are a light blue, when one might contact family or friends but would not expect colleagues to be working.

The reason for recessing this section of the dial is to allow for the time-displaying triangles that indicate home, local and reference time. The top triangle is red and represents home time – it is set to a home city using the corrector in the top left of the case - and the other two triangles are also inset into the side of the city dial and can rotate independently (except local time is fixed) so the triangles can pass each other or overlap. Under the home time triangle is a gold triangle for local time and, below that, a green-gold triangle represents reference time.

The final ‘triangle’, facing in from the edge of the dial, is a silver marker pointing to the alarm time. When the alarm marker overlaps the gold local time marker, the alarm sounds, providing this setting is on.

In addition to the triangles, the watch uses the Tonda-style hands to show local time, with the hour markers mentioned earlier framing this part of the watch. The only adjustment here is that the tips of the hands are, like the hour markers, inset with lume to allow for night-time reading of local time. Lastly, this is strictly a two-hand watch – seconds aren’t needed and would add too much to an already necessarily thick dial.

Setting the watch

The case has two pushers on the right hand side, together with a crown with co-axial button, which gives an identical appearance to the Tonda split-seconds chronograph, though the crown pusher has a different function here. On the left, there is a similar lower pusher, and only a push-piece-activated corrector on the top left, while there is an inset slider above the bottom pusher in the middle of the left-hand of the case, which turns on or off the alarm.

The corrector sets the home time zone, which must be one of the 24 full-hour settings (sorry to those living in non-integral-differential-to-UTC locations!), as with my JLC Reverso Geographique.

The crown itself does not pull-out – like my JLC Extreme Lab Chrono 2, it changes the mode for the crown’s function (though here it also changes the right-hand pushers in a similar way) and the 9 o’clock aperture window in the black ring shows the five possible settings.

N is neutral, and in this setting the crown winds the watch and the pushers do nothing.

H is for home time, whose zone is already set by the corrector, and this is the first time to set, though it subservient to local time as explained below. In this position, the crown sets the time – the hands and time disc move in synch - and the top-right button advances the day/date by a day while the bottom-right button moves it back a day. This should be done while the L and H triangles overlap, both at the bottom of the dial (only the red home triangle is visible when local time and home time are the same).

A further press of the crown button activates the L (local time mode), which is always the active time of the watch, the time the repeater strikes and the time at the 6 o’clock position on the hour ring, and indicated by a gold triangle on that ring, which sits just under the red (home time) triangle and never moves, being anchored at 6 o’clock.

Here, the top and bottom buttons advance or retard the local time by one hour, moving the city disc, time disc, hour hand, the other triangle pointers  and (where necessary) the day/date. The crown can be used for fine adjustment (impacting both minute hand and world-time dial), but a further push of the top or right pushers returns the movement to incremental full-hour differences to home time. In this way, a simple change of full-hour time zone can be accomplished by a few clicks but any specific time can be selected if required using the crown.

The next setting is A for alarm, which activates the crown only (like N, the pushers do not do anything here) and this allows setting of a 24 hour alarm by moving the silver triangle (the hands do not function here) along the time zone ring.

Finally, we have a reference R setting, which moves the green triangle with the crown and pushers acting to change the time as they do in L mode – except that only the triangle moves and not the hands - allowing a third, reference time-zone to be selected.

Moving to the left hand-side of the watch, if the alarm function is not activated (by the slide on the left-hand side) then depressing the bottom left pusher acts like a traditional minute repeater slider; the time (local, not home or reference, since local time is the primary time for both date and repeater) is sounded on the carillon chimes. If the alarm is selected then the repeater press will not sound the repeater but instead store the power (the button will remain depressed) in wait for the alarm; at the time of the alarm, the repeater will then sound, sounding the time at that point using the traditional minute repeater mechanism.

In setting the watch, therefore, first the home timezone is set by the corrector push-piece, then the accurate time in the H setting, then any reference time through the R setting and then hanging time zone oneself is done through the L local time, which maintains all other functions the same and is always the ‘true’ time.

Use

Despite this seeming complexity, #4 is actually very simple in use once set. When operating with the alarm disabled and when local time and reference time are both the same as home time, it operates like a world timer with perpetual calendar and minute repeater (already unique). Set a different reference time and we add a 24 hour GMT feature (see below left). Activate the alarm and we have the means to operate a once-per-24-hours reminder of the repeater mechanism without the full-on flashiness of a G&P sonnerie (I have a G&PS pocket watch and can never find a time to use it in public!).

If you travel somewhere simple time-wise (-5hrs, or +1hr, for instance) then the up and down pushers manage the time shift in a couple of pushes and the alarm stays on local time (useful for hotel-room wake-ups) while home-time and reference time also remain available. Repeater, alarm and calendar functions all align with where you are and not where you came from.

Plus, go somewhere more temporally complex then the #4 can manage it for you (see below right). If I live in the UK, have a boss in New York and fly to Delhi (did once happen, and this is shown here) then I can shift the local time using the crown. I can then see the reference time (NYC in green), home time (GMT in red) and local time (non-standard GMT+5:30 in gold), and can see my 5:59 wake up (being just before the hour gives a much richer repeater experience than coinciding with the 6am wake-up my phone will give me anyway….). It’s also easy to see how long until the alarm because both the local and alarm time triangles face each other on the same 24 hour ring (not quite as obvious as on the UN Sonata, but it’s a cleaner design, I think.)

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