Jordan Rodney Renaud
Jordan Renaud served as the official clockmaker of The Canadian Clock Museum. He passed away in 2024, following a bout with cancer.
A man with a gentle and meticulous spirit, I knew Jordan for many years. Amongst several tools, he helped connect me with my first watch cleaning machine, which I still have to this day.
Digital portrait based on memorial photograph of Jordan Renaud
To Set or Not to Set
Cam Wolf, reporting for GQ, digs into why some collectors opt not to set the time on their watches.
The vintage angle, in instances where replacement parts are scarce-to-non-existent, certainly holds merit. The setting works are an area where I've seen significant damage done to a watch movement that has gone too long without service. More often than not, it is the mainplate that takes the lion's share of the damage, too.
Quiet, Spacious, & Pristine
Reporting for Esquire Magazine with an incisiveness and level of playful snark on par with some of the best of Jack Forster's work, Chris Hall takes a tour the heart and soul of Omega's vast, Swiss headquarters, designed by Japanese architect, Shigeru Ban.
I admire that Hall was bold enough to ask Omega CEO, Raynald Aeschlimann, point-blank, for his thoughts on the move Rolex made to cut the perceived esteem of Omega's METAS certification down a notch by qualifying multiple references from its sister brand's appreciably less expensive Tudor Black Bay Collection through the program. Parrying the joust, in what looked to be a near fumble but finished with a practiced and polished answer, Aeschlimann clearly wasn't pleased by the deft play of his prime competitor:
I don’t want to say ‘pleased’ — for me the most important thing was that one of the brands of the Rolex group was considering [master-chronometer certification] as a new standard in the watch industry. Making that step was quite positive news for watchmaking.
Image credit Christoffer Rudquist
Another Notable Rise in Rolex Retail Prices
On the heels of last year's significant price increase across its collection, the outset of 2024 has brought another appreciable jump of around 4% for most models in the UK and 8-10% in Canada. The rise in price is effective immediately and applies to stock that Rolex Authorized Dealers received at the prior MSRP.
As of this writing, prices in the US remain the same. So a non-US resident could, in theory, enjoy a pleasant vacation on the money saved travelling to the States to purchase one of the brand's pricier offerings—that is if they can find a retailer who has one to part with.
Even at the lower 4% increase, on estimated annual sales of $5 billion, this jump more than accounts for the $100 million fine levied against Rolex France SAS by France's Haute Autorité de la Concurrence last month.
Visiting Switzerland’s ‘Watch Valley’
Frankie Adkins reporting for National Geographic:
Most of these watchmaking farms are no longer functional—climate change and the industrial revolution forced family businesses to migrate to larger factories in the city—but their multimillion dollar legacies prove that a slow artisan craft can keep pace in a hurried high-tech world.
Image credit Audemars Piguet
Ukrainian Refugee Restores Life to Canadian Clock Tower
Liudmyla Pass, a Ukranian watchmaker who arrived in Chapel's Cove, Newfoundland as a refugee less than a month ago, has revived the post office tower clock in nearby Carbonear that had previously been out of operation for decades. The tower clock dates back to 1905.
Image credit Paul Daly for The Canadian Press
Ye Olde Clock Shop
Jordan Salama, reporting for National Geographic, pays a visit to Theron “Jeff” Jeffery, proprietor of Ye Olde Clock Shop in New Freedom, Pennsylvania.
It is striking that most of a clockmaker’s work is spent focused on parts so small, in the service of something so big as keeping time. For a mechanical clock to function with any kind of accuracy, all of these tiny parts must work together in perfect synchronicity. And the ubiquity of these precision timekeeping devices has fundamentally revolutionized the way we work and live.
“When you come right down to it, time is still a man-made invention,” Jeffery says, “and that makes it flawed.”
Breitling Acquires Universal Genève
Hinted at back in October, Breitling has acquired the beloved and storied watch brand, Universal Genève.
No stranger to acquisitions, Breitling CEO, Georges Kern, has a successful track record integrating historic watch brands into a larger family, having assisted in integrating IWC, JLC, and A. Lange & Söhne into The Richemont Group at the outset of the millennium.
Image credit Universal Genève
Haldibloc
Custom, laser-cut, anti-shock springs for timepieces crafted by independent watchmaker, Beat Haldimann.
Incorporating the Haldimann logo at the base of the spring is a nice touch. I particularly appreciate the way the spring has been formed to frame the ideal quantity of lubricant for the balance pivot that it is there to protect.
Image credit MJ23
Complexity Is Multiplicative
Rob Pike on simplicity in the context of engineering at Google circa 2009:
Simpler things are easier to understand, easier to build, easier to debug, and easier to maintain.
Complexity just happens and its costs are literally exponential.
On the other hand, simplicity takes work—but it's all up front. Simplicity is very hard to design, but it's easier to build and much easier to maintain. By avoiding complexity, simplicity's benefits are exponential.
The same principles hold equally true in the design of mechanical timepieces.
World’s First Diamond Wafer
A 100mm single-crystal diamond wafer, created by Diamond Foundry.
When I first read about the successful creation of appreciably smaller synthetic diamond wafers back in 2004, I figured it was just a matter of time before they found their way into high-end timepieces. Nearly 20 years later, that has yet to come to pass and synthetic sapphire remains the most scratch-resistant material used to protect the dial and hands of a watch (as well as the movement, in cases that feature a sapphire display back).
Rolex was the first to commercially debut a sapphire crystal in a wristwatch with the Rolex Oysterquartz reference 5100 back in 1970. Now that synthetic diamond wafers of this size and quality are available, the time is ripe for mass production. Will the crown be the first offer synthetic diamond crystals in their timepieces, too?
If their stealthy rollout of Parachrom hairsprings at the turn of the millennium is any indication, perhaps they already have.
Image credit Diamond Foundry
