Innovations, intentions and interrogations – Brands to mention - Part 3 of 3

Berthoud & Pouzait
Basel being Basel, not everything you want to see is in the confines of the BaselWorld halls. Such is the case of the new brand Berthoud & Pouzait, which launched its collection in private rooms in the restaurant Rollerhof, alongside the Basel Münster Cathedral.
The names of Berthoud and Pouzait are far from new to the watch industry, in fact they date back around two hundred years. Berthoud invented the ‘Oscillateur’, the device that kept humidity out of timepieces and for whom Breguet worked as an apprentice. Pouzait invented the ‘seconde morte’ and the ‘minute morte’ and originated the Ecole d’Horlogerie de Genève.
Sven Levy, the President and CEO of Montres Berthoud and Pouzait, launched the first models without any banner waving, in a very discreet manner that somehow managed to underline the quality and importance of the watches rather than the people behind their creation.

Sven Levy and the MODÈLE NO 9 DATE DISTINGUÉ by Berthoud

The Modèle No 9 Date Distingué is 43.5 mm watch in 18-carat gold with a self-winding movement with a double barrel offering a second independent time zone, a 6-day power reserve indicator at 9 o’clock, small seconds at 6 o’clock and a superb date window attractively and uniquely placed alongside the watch’s crown. The Modèle No 2 Le Saphir is a 44 mm watch in a sapphire case with 18-carat white gold screws. There is a sapphire crown with a 22-carat gold dial and hands. The bracelet is also in sapphire with a sapphire deployment buckle. The functions are hours, minutes, small seconds at 6 o’clock and a 6-day power reserve at 9 o’clock and an independent second time zone.
The timepieces are made in Switzerland and, in my understanding, the brand is establishing its production facilities in the Jura in order to increase the production facilities and become a genuine ‘manufacture’. It is there the brand intends to create a minute repeater and a perpetual calendar. I look forward to seeing and hearing more about this audacious new brand.

Pilo & Co
I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Pilo & Co because they continually produce handsome watches at truly inexpensive prices.
This year there were two new, very elegant watches that caught my attention, the new Tempo, a classical round pink PVD gold-coated case with a silver dial, Roman numerals and blue hands. The watch is equipped with an automatic ETA 2846 movement with a date aperture at 6 o’clock and a central seconds hand.
The other watch is for the ladies and goes by the name of Invidia. This square watch has a pink PVD gold-coated case and is set with 14 diamonds on two opposite sides of the bezel. There is a sapphire crystal and white dial with Arabic numerals, a central seconds hand, a white leather strap and the watch is equipped with a Swiss quartz movement.

TEMPO, DAVID VAN HEIM TIMEWEAR, INVIDIA by Pilo & Co

In the David Van Heim Timewear collection launched by Pilo two years ago, the watches are less expensive than the Swiss Made Pilo & Co models, but lack nothing in design and know-how. The latest offering is the reference VH-99 which has a black PVD-coated case with a domed mineral glass. The dial is black with Arabic numerals, there is a quartz chronograph movement, a black leather strap and the watch is water-resistant to 30 metres.
For buyers looking for value for their money, both the Pilo & Co. and the David Van Heim watches will certainly meet their needs.

Breitling
Jean-Paul Girardin, Breitling’s Vice President, informed me that the launch of the Chronomat B01 last year was highly successful. The styling of the chronograph, aesthetics of the timepiece and the fact that the watch was equipped with Breilting’s very own in-house manufactured movement, was well accepted in the market. The brand managed to manufacture 30,000 pieces in 2009 and this year’s target is 50,000.
For 2010, there are new models in the Galactic collection for both men and women – a 36 mm version with an automatic mechanical movement and a 32 mm version with a quartz movement, and the Chronospace timepiece, now available in 4 colours; as well as a revamped and very sporty looking deep-sea version of the SuperOcean – suitably water-resistant to 1,500 metres (5,000 feet).
In its Breitling for Bentley series, there is a new GMT model with an exclusive dual time zone movement. Its independent hour hand, combined with a 24-hour graduation, enables instant reading of all time zones, symbolised by the world’s great cities cited around the inner rim. Another distinctive feature of the Calibre 47B is its ‘30-second chronograph’ with a central hand performing a turn of the dial in half a minute instead of the usual 60 seconds.

Jean-Paul Girardin and the SUPERSPORTS by Breitling

In the same series there is the new Supersports, which comes as a Limited Edition of 1,000 pieces. The bezel is adorned with an elegant raised and knurled motif evoking the characteristic design of Bentley controls and the watch is equipped with an exclusive Breitling for Bentley chronometer-certified by the COSC: a self-winding chronograph movement with central 60-minute counter, 1/4th of a second chronograph and a 12-hour counter at 9 o’clock with a central scale with hundredths of an hour or hundredths of a minute graduations. There is a traditional fixed tachometric scale with a dashboard-style dial and a ‘variable tachometer’ with circular slide rule. This world-exclusive Breitling-made device – contrary to the usual tachometers that cannot extend beyond 60-second periods – serves to measure average speed whatever the time elapsed, the distance covered or the speed reached. The watch comes with a rubber strap or a Speed bracelet and is water-resistant to 100 metres. Professional watches for professionals and those that would like to be.

… and briefly
Breguet introduced a great looking timepiece called the Breguet Marine Royale. This 45 mm 18-carat white gold watch has a rotating bezel with a luminous marker and a rubber-covered alarm on/off pushpiece at 4 o’clock with an on/off indicator aperture at 12 o’clock. The dial is in 18-carat silvered-gold displaying a wave pattern manually engraved on a rose engine lathe and has a triangular hand at the centre for setting the alarm time and a date aperture at 6 o’clock and a power reserve indicator between 9 and 11 o’clock. The watch is equipped with a self-winding mechanical movement with a straight-line lever escapement and is water-resistant to 300 metres.

Steinway & Sons Swiss watches were created through the meeting of Fabrizio Cavalca and the piano manufacturer. Quite remarkable in their concept for what must obviously be a very niche market, these timepieces are obviously closely linked to the world of music.
The Model C ‘Seconde Métronomique’ features a precise one-second metronome on the dial. Deceptively simple in appearance, the watch has a one-second retrograde that was seemingly impossible to produce. Despite this, it was developed by Jean-Marc Wiederrecht (winner of at the 2007 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève for Best watchmaker) for the brand. The 43.7 x 26 mm watch is available in either 18-carat white, red or yellow gold and is limited to 100 pieces of each colour. Equipped with a hand-wound Calibre C50 movement, the watch is water-resistant to 30 metres.
The Model M is in 18-carat gold with a soundboard of 12 strings. Equipped with a Calibre S-1853 automatic Swiss movement with matching black gold rotor and bridge, the watch has a ‘tuning-fork’ seconds hand.
There are certainly many Steinway pianos around the world, whether or not the owners are fanatical enough to want the accompanying wristwatch is another question. However, the pieces are beautifully crafted and quite unique in their concept. Let’s take another look next year …

MARINE ROYALE by Breguet, C ‘SECOND MÉTRONOMIQUE’ by Steinway & Sons Swiss and COPROLITE by Artya

Finally, a watch with a difference from a man and a company that use difference as their benchmark – Artya. Founded recently by Yvan Arpa, the man behind the Titanic watches launched by Romain Jerome, his new Coprolite model sports a case in bronze, chiselled, hammered and engraved by Manuel Zanetti in Ticino. The watch is equipped with a self-winding movement, has a 42-hour power reserve and a rotor with a liver of sulphur patina and polished with sodium bicarbonate. The hands are pierced and oxidized and there is a sapphire crystal front and back. The dial, ah, the dial, that’s made from coprolite, which for the uninitiated is the fossilized faeces of Mesozoic reptiles – ‘merde alors’, as they say in the best French circles.

Conclusion
Well, that’s it for another absorbing and fulfilling year. Let’s hope that between now and the next BaselWorld, the world’s horological geniuses will have convinced watch lovers to part with more pennies than they did last year.
However, I have one last dominating thought: are watches not becoming too complex? Obviously watchmakers want to exhibit their prowess by producing more and more innovative complications, but watches are basically for reading the time and as is so often the case with the wonderful horological creations we are seeing these days, there is so much going on, so many technical aspects to attract our attention, especially when skeleton movements confuse the reading, that perhaps we are spending too much time to actually tell the time.
Will purity and minimalism ever return to enable us to use a watch for its original raison d’être? Now there’s a thought!

• Part 1 of 3 – Innovations, intentions and interrogations
• Part 2 of 3 - Hall one and beyond
• Part 3 of 3 – Brands to mention

Source: Europa Star June - July 2010 Magazine Issue