The Rolex Yacht Master ii ( 2 ) is also the most recently introduced major new model from Rolex, having debuted in 2007 as the second member of the Yacht-Master family.

There’s supposed to be an old Chinese adage that risk and opportunity are two sides of the same coin.  The problem, of course, is that usually you see only one or the other.  Many luxury watch houses are pulling back, going classical, looking for the broadest appeal with the smallest risk.  Hublot is not one […]

When metal meets water, bad things can happen–with the metal usually getting the worst of the bargain. Nowadays stainless steels are most often used when the nasty cocktail of salts and natural ability of water to corrode need to be fought; but before there was stainless steel, bronze (a copper-tin alloy) was what kept ships […]

It’s the oldest complication in watchmaking: a timepiece that chimes the time, and the newest one from the world renowned house of Audemars Piguet is as seductive a blend of old school and new wave watchmaking as a (very well-off) connoisseur could wish. Chiming the time is as old as mechanical clocks themselves (the word […]

Once upon a time, there was a word that described what every man aspired to be: a gentleman. Shockingly enough, virtues like subtlety and self restraint were prized as the hallmarks of a man worthy of the respect of his fellows (as well as the admiration of the ladies) and ostentation and look-at-me brashness just […]

The year was 1969, and one of the last great problems in watchmaking lay unsolved: how to make an automatic, or self-winding, chronograph watch. Though the automatic chronograph has become more common, at the start of 1969 they didn’t yet exist. Zenith changed watchmaking forever when they introduced the watch aptly known as the “El […]

You see a lot of watches out there with two hour hands, supposedly designed for travelers — one hour hand to tell the time at home, and the other for the local time. But not all two time zone watches are created equal. In the vast majority, the 12-hour local time hour hand (two time […]

Montblanc, the company known since 1909 for its iconic pens, is a relatively new presence in fine watchmaking but clearly means to be as well known for its timepieces as for its writing instruments.  In an amazingly short time Montblanc has not only delivered watches that fulfill the high expectations one justifiably has of the […]

The Patravi EvoTec Calendar has a quiet beauty that’s easy to miss at first, and it wants to be loved for its brain as well as its body –but then, that’s what you want in a long term relationship, right?  While other watch companies try to woo with wild designs, or wow with über-pricey complications […]

What goes around, comes around –call them ultra thin or extra flat, thin dress watches are back, and a rose by any other name would be just as elegant.  Though a newcomer to fine watchmaking in recent years might be forgiven for not knowing it, making a thin watch (and wearing one) was for decades […]

If you haven’t yet heard of Montres DeWitt, allow us to introduce you to a small company that makes some of the most beautifully different and intriguingly ingenious watches in the world.  This boutique haute horlogerie Geneva based firm was founded in 2002 by Jérôme DeWitt, who comes by his fascination with watchmaking honestly –the […]

If you’re a hardcore watch lover, the most exciting time of the year is its beginning –not because the dew of spring is fresh on a world reborn, but because it’s when the two watchapaloozas known as the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, and BaselWorld, take place in Geneva and Basel –bringing us all […]

For someone who’s learning to love fine watches for the first time, it often comes as a surprise to find out that Seiko –a company many associate only with democratically priced quartz watches –is, in connoisseur’s circles, admired for its luxury mechanical watches as well.  Seiko is, in fact, virtually the only watchmaking company that […]

One of the biggest news items for watch fans last year was about something small: the Corum Golden Bridge turned 30.  Introduced in 1980, the Corum Golden Bridge was then and is now a design that plays against conventional expectations of a watch.  The Golden Bridge begins with an unusually shaped mechanism: it’s what’s known […]

If you love a comeback story (and who doesn’t) Roger Dubuis is a watchmaking house that’s probably already on your radar. Founded in 1995, the company has never been excessively weighed down by its own history, which left it free to innovate, and innovate it did –by the mid-2000s, Roger Dubuis had a huge manufactory […]

It’s often said that painting was never the same after Picasso; the same could be said of the art of watchmaking, and the watch known as the Ulysse Nardin Freak.  The Freak was launched in its first version at the start of the new century, and it was one of the very few watches of […]