Jon Edwards

To commemorate his marque's 20th anniversary, Kari Voutilainen has released a well-executed nod to an early pocket watch that he fabricated while attending watchmaking school in Finland.

Vacheron Constantin outdoes its prior record-setting timepiece taking the crown, once again, for the world's most complicated mechanical watch with the debut of The Berkley Grand Complication, a massive, one-of-a-kind pocketwatch crafted for William R. Berkley.

Based on the same ebauche as Vacheron Constantin reference 57260, which previously held the world record, The Berkley boasts 63 complications constructed from 2,877 individual components. Of note among the complications, The Berkley features the world's first Chinese perpetual calendar and can strike the time in passing or on demand—in full Westminster grandeur—across five gongs.

Canadian lapidary artist, Alexandre Beauregard, teams up with independent watchmaker, Vianney Halter, for his second foray into high-end watchmaking.

Ben Clymer, at Hodinkee, reviews the Rolex Le Mans chronograph, released to commemorate 100 of years of Le Mans in 2023.

Bringing to the table a 1964 issue of Sebring magazine from his personal collection, he holds up tangible evidence of the provenance of the brand's use of the Le Mans name, which was quickly eclipsed by the 24 Hours of Daytona races in the latter half of the 1960s.

For those who've ever fancied living in a clock tower, The Clocktower Penthouse in San Francisco's burgeoning SoMa neighbourhood has it all.

Located at the historic Clock Tower Lofts Building, at 461 2nd Street, the building was erected in 1907 and served as the headquarters of the original Max Schmidt Lithography Co.

David Ichim and JX Su break down the function, drawbacks, benefits, and precision of Ulysse Nardin's silicon Dual Ulysse Escapement used in the second generation of The Freak.

Swiss levers usually function with a larger, but bearable, 52° lift angle, although the tendency in recent years is to go for a reduced 49°. In comparison the total escaping angle (another term for lift angle) is low as 36° in dead-beat, detent escapements.

Hand crafted by Ben Bridge's mill worker for their Rolex boutique in Honolulu.

A modern take on the age-old craft of marquetry in a new Patek Philippe Calatrava (reference 5089G-129) aimed squarely at the surf-loving elites of Silicon Valley.

The marquetry work on this showcase piece is excellent, as one would expect from the artisans at Patek Philippe, and the qualities inherent in wood grain guarantee that no two watches in this limited run of ten pieces will be exactly the same.

The HS14 is a one-of-a-kind, atomic-inspired brooch designed by Bertrand Mak, founder of the Sauvereign Boutiques in Hong Kong, for the Irish actor, Cillian Murphy, to wear to the 2024 Academy Awards where he took home the Oscar for Best Actor, for his role in Oppenheimer.

The sunburst guilloché motif that lends the eight concentric trapeziums of the brooch their brilliance was executed in the ateliers of the independent, master watchmaker, Kari Voutilainen.

A film recounting Mercedes Gleitze's triumphant swim across the English Channel.

Directed by Elliott Hasler, who was born in the same seaside town on the south coast of England as Gleitze.

A new, independent watch brand forged of a partnership between 31-year-old watchmaker, Julien Tixier, and 65-year-old, industry veteran, Dominique Renaud, who founded the complications specialist Renaud & Papi alongside Giulio Papi in 1986. Renaud's first namesake marque, Renaud & Papi, is more commonly abbreviated APRP today—the AP referring to Audemars Piguet, who own a majority stake in the firm.

For his follow-up act, Ranaud is set to unveil 7 innovations on centuries-old watchmaking techniques. The first of those innovations is a bit of a stretch in that regard, however. A novel, platinum, dancer flywheel mechanism in Renaud Tixier's debut timepiece, designed to lend the micro-rotor greater winding efficiency, is a stepwise improvement on a decades-old technique. The very concept of a micro-rotor having first been submitted to a patent office 70 years prior, in 1954, by Universal Genève. Irrespective of their marketing team's distortion of reality, it is an interesting technical achievement.

By all accounts, each new innovation that Renaud Tixier has in the pipeline will be housed in a watch named after each day of the week. While Monday's offering is not to my personal taste, I am curious to see what's in store for Tuesday.

Housing an all-new caliber, cased in titanium, with dual sapphire crystals, and guised under a pleasantly modern, vintage-inspired dial with a rice paper aesthetic that belies its metal composition, Citizen has hit a striking balance with this milestone timepiece.

A layer of relatively thick, cellulose varnish applied over the dial's texture prior to pad printing the indices, Breguet numerals, and Citizen wordmark lends the face of the watch an added sense of depth and a subtle, additional touch of modernity.

With the exception of the undersized ratchet wheel and eccentric force of the hairspring, everything about the new caliber 0270 sings. I applaud Citizen's continued use the free-sprung balance wheel that they first debuted in the caliber 0200.

Donald Ross Bayley was a Canadian watchmaker born on the west rocks of Owen Sound. He served for a number of years as watchmaker for the Rolex Authorized Dealer, DC Taylor, in the Muskoka Region of Ontario.

The tool used by Dominique Buser and Cyrano Devanthey, of Oscillon, to shape the pivots of the wheels in their timepieces into their final form.

A two-handed operation that is akin to rubbing your belly and tapping the top of your head at the same time, it takes a good deal of patience, practice, and hard-won skill to master this machine at the level of precision needed to craft watch parts.

The case of Barrelhand's forthcoming Monolith timepiece is the first I have seen that has been strategically fine-tuned to save on the material costs associated with 3D printing.

Reminiscent of the Linde Werdelin SpidoLite and more recent pieces from DeBethune, the hollowed-out lugs are an easy win. It is the arrangement of the material egress holes around the inside diameter of the case, to enable a hollowing out of the internal case structure, that caught my attention. Apparently, Barrelhand founder, Karel Bachand, was likewise pleased enough with this innovation to call it out directly in the marketing material, referring to the 3D-printable, scandium-aluminum-magnesium alloy that the case is composed of as being air-core insulated.