Who Needs Split Seconds When You Can Have Two Full-fledged Chronos?
With a movement developed by Stephen McDonnell, MB&F doubles down on the chronograph—in their first-ever chronograph—the Legacy Machine Sequential EVO, featuring a novel "Twinverter" mechanism to fluidly couple and decouple the two chronograph mechanisms.
Image credit MB&F
Rexhep Rexhepi Chronomètre Contemporain II
The original Chronomètre Contemporain by Rexhep Rexhepi, which debuted in 2018, was a masterclass in movement layout and finishing. The follow-up from Rexhepi packs greater complexity under the hood, while retaining its visual identity on the dial side.
Surpassing the movement that preceded it in specs on paper, that increased complexity lends the new movement an altogether different visual appeal that falls a stride short of the supreme elegance of its forebearer. The supersized breadth of the anglage and oversized spokes on the balance wheel seem almost caricature-like when posed next to the original.
I would be interested to hear more from Rexhepi himself about the thinking that went into bifurcating power delivery and, in particular, the changes to the balance wheel. In addition to the unusually large spokes, the modifications to the variable-inertia weights on the balance render it moderately more tedious to make precise timing adjustments in such tight quarters. Robin Nooy, over at Monochrome, has reported that the balance screws are responsible for the 60% increase in inertia at the balance wheel. However, it is clearly the increased girth of those spokes that account for the majority of that increase. Ideally, though, you want to move as much of that weight as possible to the outer rim, or felloe, of the balance wheel to optimize rate stability. Time will tell if this new balance design has staying power or whether it will mirror the trajectory of Voutilainen's Carbontime Fused Quartz Balance in the Rexhepi timeline.
At the end of the day, the execution of the finishing remains world class and it retains a free-sprung balance, so it's still got it where it counts.
Image credit Akrivia
Louis Erard × Massena Lab
Traditional in looks with nouveau execution. The stamped dial of the new Louis Erard Regulateur, featuring design direction from William Massena, serves up a pleasing aesthetic with typography that almost seems to float above the dial.
The broad form of the 'A' in Massena's logotype, well-suited to watch dials and informed by vintage watch typography, stands in stark contrast to the slimmer, more modern 'A' in Louis-Erard's logotype, which is derived from type designed for signage and screens.
Image credit Louis Erard via Watches by SJX
Winged Victory of Samothrace
One of Vacheron Constantin's engravers putting the finishing touches on the wings of Nike for their Métiers d’Art 'Tribute to Great Civilisations' reference 7620A/000G-B928.
Rounding the stairs to encounter this graceful remnant from the Island of Samothrace, carved from white marble, stands out as one of the absolute highlights of the Louvre for me.
Image credit Vacheron Constantin via SJX
First to the Summit?
In 1924, British mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine set out to climb to the top of Mount Everest, nearly 30 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's successful ascent in 1953. Mark Synnott, author of The Third Pole, posits that photographic evidence of Mallory and Irvine's summit of Mount Everest may still exist from Irvine’s Vest Pocket Kodak camera.
I've long wondered whether Mallory and Irvine managed to make it to the peak—without supplemental oxygen, no less. Regardless of whether or not evidence ever surfaces that they did, Hillary and Norgay will forever remain the first to do it and live to tell the tale.
Image via Wade Davis
Sapphire Gongs
The L.U.C. Full Strike Sapphire from Chopard serves up some impressive material and acoustical engineering. Hewn from a solid disc of corundum, its duo of sapphire gongs that sound the time aid in improving the transmission of sound through its full-sapphire case.
Understandably, production is limited to just 5 pieces.
Image credit Chopard International SA
Why Watch Ads Are Always Smiling at You
Empirical evidence for the subliminal, positive impact of setting the hands of a clock or watch in a configuration that resembles a smile, from a team of researchers across Germany, Egypt, and the USA.
Somewhat surprisingly, watches set in this configuration were found to induce "in women significantly stronger ratings of pleasure than in men."
Hands-on With the OAK Collection
Ben Clymer, of Hodinkee, touches the tip of the ice-burg of Patrick Getreide's "One of a Kind Collection" (a.k.a. The OAK Collection) that is on display from May 19th to 25th, 2022 at the London Design Museum. One of the highlights includes a splendid tourbillon pocket watch, commissioned by Henry Graves Jr. in 1932, featuring a movement crafted by Pellaton for Patek Philippe.
While it may seem a little over-the-top for Getreide to employ a watchmaker for himself, when you consider the fact that servicing just one of the timepieces from his collection of over 600 rare and complicated timepieces would easily cost five figures at the manufacturer and potentially take years to get back, it makes sense. I have little doubt that maintaining this impressive collection for Getreide is both painstaking and a great pleasure for his watchmaker, Gabriel Tortola.
Image credit HODINKEE
Incense Clock
A hand-carved and well-preserved incense clock, in the form of a dragon, on display at the Time Museum of Tehran.
As the incense stick inside the dragon slowly burned up, it would burn through the strings laid across the back of the dragon and the bells on the ends of each string would drop, their chimes marking the passage of time.
Image credit Hamed Tavakoli
