|
Wednesday April 21 was our last day at the fair; we were exhausted, but two more brands to see and we would be on our way home. PANERAIA brand with "fanatical" followers, with a strong and consistent design and wonderful watches. Panerai were presenting a whole new array of timepieces this year, among them my very favorite: the Radomir Black Seal in the cushion shaped 45mm Radomir case. Absolutely beautiful and a true looker!!
An 8 Day Radomir in rose gold or steel with a power reserve indicator at the back of the watch. Hiding this indication was a good idea since the dial looks much cleaner and Panerais look much better in general with uncluttered dials.
Radomir GMT with 24 hour time display.
Luminor chronograph, limited to 1000 pieces and water resistant to 1000 meters. I find the watch dial to be too cluttered and as with the Luminor Submersible I don’t think that the cushion shaped case and bezel really look good together.
The Luminor Submersible is water resistant to 2500 meters and is limited to 600 pieces.
The Black Seal compass, I guess this 60mm gimmick is a must have for all the Panerai aficionados so if you want one you better hurry since only 100 will be made.
The Luminor Chronograph Tantalium: A beautiful chronograph in tantalum (a metal which is extremely difficult to work, imagine: each hole for the chronograph pushers takes over 4 hours to drill!!) in a 44mm case.
Off we ran to Jaeger LeCoultre our final brand... JAEGER-LECOULTREThe talk of the fair was JLC’s Gyrotourbillon which was an amazingly beautiful 3 axis tourbillon with perpetual calendar and continuous equation of time (for a description of the equation du temps marcahnte see my description of the Blancpain model in the Basel fair write up). Among all the tourbillons seen at Basel and Geneva (single or multiple axis) the Gyrotourbillon was the most beautiful, the tourbillon cage was mesmerizing!! A true feat.
The other JLC novelties were:
After a quick lunch we had to face the Genevan traffic jams (this is no joke, they really exists!) to get back to the hotel, pick up our belongings and go to the airport to fly back. This year’s SIHH I found was much more interesting than the previous year, interestingly the brands presenting new tourbillons all had "normal" one axis models (other than JLC of course), but I guess it takes some time for the multiple axis models to go south from Basel to Geneva! The JLC Gyrotourbillon was a superb piece of craftsmanship, I really liked the Lange 1815 chronograph and automatics, the AP cabinet piece was stunning but my personal favourite and by far was the Vacheron Constantin Hommage aux Grandes Explorateurs. CONCLUSIONSThis ended our 6 day annual pilgrimage to Switzerland, last year’s rather austere atmosphere due to economic turmoil, SRAS and the Iraq war were forgotten, there was a rather lively atmosphere both in Basel and Geneva where almost all brands presented at least one interesting and novel watch. However, it seems as though absolutely everyone who has a case, dial and hands wants to be part of Haute Horlogerie, which in the long run would need to be redefined at some point. I thought that I had seen more tourbillons than possible in 2003, well this year I woke up upon my return home with some kind of tourbillon hang over!! That’s most probably why the timepieces that attracted me the most were the "quiet" ones. My main question today, with everyone making such complicated watches, is will anyone in the future remember how to build a perfectly finished, aesthetically pleasing time only wristwatch? See you all next year!
General Watch Discussion
|
ThePuristS.com Home Page
|
