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Atelier de Chronometrie: A quick visit!
My wife and I were in Barcelona for a few days and, as per a cancelled trip from 2 years ago, I contacted Santi at AdC for a visit. Last time we had met was back in 2018 at the now defunct Salon QP show in London where I photographed 4 of their watches side by side.
On this occasion we had a general conversation along with the only watchmaker now working at the atelier, Eduard, about the direction the small workshop is going in, including the production of a handful of chronographs and some other projects that are probably not known publicly yet so I will not disclose them here (I didn't actually ask Santi about what parts of the conversation I could mention, but it's best to err on the side of silence).
The latest watch (photographs below), no.22, is the prototype of the new AdC calibre M284, designed with the expertise of Luca Soprano. Overall design follows on stylistically from previous watches and the 37.5mm stainless steel case is modestly sized with a fantastic 7mm diameter crown (there will be a 35mm case option with this movement as well: 13 watches with the new movement have been ordered and the waiting list is now around 3 years).
As is the norm now with independent watchmaking, plenty of further processes are being brought in house, for example, in the area of dial making.
Over the years I have photographed some of the finest Geneva stripes including my top three: Mortiz Grossmann, Dufour and Daniel Roth under the Jean Daniel Nicolas name. The finishing work on this movement ranks up there and the three dimensionality of the stripes is some of the best I have seen.
Please enjoy the watch for now and if you have any questions, I may have some answers!
(Note: all image have been cropped from full frame images to 1 x 1 and my lighting options were limited so apologies if these aren't perfect, although they are the first live images outside of the workshop's photos).
Regards,
Baruch
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Atelier de Chronometrie: A quick visit!
My wife and I were in Barcelona for a few days and, as per a cancelled trip from 2 years ago, I contacted Santi at AdC for a visit. Last time we had met was back in 2018 at the now defunct Salon QP show in London where I photographed 4 of their watches si...
Thank you for sharing
The finishing of the movement appears to be excellent, though I am not an expert. Thank you for sharing these photos. As long as machines are unable to match the results of hand finishing, there will always be demand for watches produced using traditional...
Much appreciated, as always!
I hope your article on Frodsham will see the light of day! Two of your framed prints adorn my bathroom and were perhaps the first warning to my now fiancée about my watch problem, I mean interest!
For years independent watchmaking has held the most fascination for me.
With regards the article, if you remember the Nicholas Cage film, Adaptation, that charts the difficulties of writing the script for the film itself (very meta), then it's more likely that the article will eventually turn out to be written about the painf...
The first picture of the back...
... made me jump off my chair. My goodness, this is just fantastic.
🤩
Hi Baruch, Amazing pictures of an amazing watch! Was reading what you wrote about the „three dimensionality“ and hand-finishing but these words really take a true significance when looking at your pictures. In spite of my aging eyes, these photos make me ...
Oh wow! This is my kind of watch!
Nice anglage on the plates and a gigantic slow beat balance wheel! Looks delicious! Thanks for sharing! Now I have another reason to visit Barcelona!
