Glashtte Original ManufactureLast week, Bert and I traveled from The Netherlands (our home country) to Glashtte in Germany. It is only a one hour flight, from Amsterdam to Dresden. In Dresden, a driver awaited us with a welcome sign and a shiny black BMW 530. We ve seen worse. As it was end of the day, we went straight to this beautiful design hotel (QF) and had diner with Rene Marx (Head of Digital Media) and Michael Hammer (PR) of Glashtte Original. It became immediately clear that we were dealing with some true watch passionates here. Bert and I were looking forward to the next day.German Watch Museum and?Watchmaking SchoolGetting up at 6:00 isn t exactly a hobby of ours, but the black...
The Omega Speedmaster Mark IIIt was at least ten years ago that I stumbled upon a very rudimentary website depicting a chronology of wild, boldly styled 1970s Omega chronographs and I enjoyed marveling at them, but one stuck out as especially notable: the Omega Speedmaster Mark II 145.014. Yes, amongst all of the crazy flying saucer-esque, deeply cased oddities, it was the Omega Speedmaster Mark II that caught my eye. However, priorities changed, time dragged on and I resisted buying one, or even seriously looking for one, for a long, long time. And then C I snapped one up and havent regretted it since. Todays #TBT takes a look at this revolutionary watch, briefly details its restoration, an...
Horological ArtWhat happens when an artist also is?a watch enthusiast? He or she hopefully creates some horological art! We have our own artist on-board, by the name of Teun van Heerebeek, who surprises you with his recurring Watches & Pencils articles here on Fratello. People – including us – love this stuff and some of you even contacted us to have it on print (which can be done so via this link). However, there are more horological artists around. Meet Cay Broendum.Cay BroendumYou might recognize his name from his and Omega artwork that is shown on his own website(s), or from his interview with Hodinkee in 2013. We thought it would be interesting to talk to him once more....
PanoMatic LunaAs you can see, the PanoMatic Luna is one of Glashtte Original s ladies watches. The version we have here, is the latest addition to that collection. A Boutique Edition, that will – as its name suggests – only be available through the official Glashtte Original boutiques.Like any other PanoMatic Luna watch, it measures 39.4mm in diameter. However, the boutique edition comes with a beautiful blue mother-of-pearl dial. Let s have a look.Boutique EditionThe GO PanoMatic Luna is one of the three ladies collections from?the Glashtte manufacture. The other ones, the Pavonina and Lady Serenade are perhaps more traditional ladies watches. With sleek and slender design...
Stop2goAbout a year ago, Gerard Nijenbrinks wrote a review on the Mondaine stop2go watch.?Just a small recap of the stop2go movement before we head over to the Mondaine SBB Gottardo2016 stop2go review:The stop2go system is powered by the Swiss made caliber?cal 58-02. This movement ensures that the watch runs exactly like the official Swiss railway station clocks. The second hand rotates the dial in 58 seconds, so a bit quicker than normal. Once at 12 o clock, it stops for 2 seconds and advances again. In these two seconds, you also see the minute hand increasing exactly one minute marker. It is exactly the same movement as in the earlier Mondaine stop2go review we did.So what is new?Mondaine...
Since 1990, Jo?rg Schauer designs and produces his distinctive watches. Thereby, Schauer prefers stainless steel for the watch cases, high quality mechanical movements and a clean and unique design language. His signature feature has become the 12-fold screwed bezel. Essential part is the technical screwing of all hand-finished Schauer watch cases.Due to its perfect surfaces, precision and a design reduced to its essentials, Schauer watches are real collectibles for 25 years now. Many editions are sold out for years.25 Years of Passionate Watch ProductionAs professional goldsmith and specialist for handmade watch cases, he quickly gained a good reputation among collectors worldwide. More tha...
Omega ConstellationYou probably know me best for being an avid Speedmaster fan and collector. But my passion for watches started actually with the Omega Constellation. I wrote about this in-depth when I did a write up on the Sedna gold version of the Omega Globemaster. Anyway, the Globemaster is part of the Constellation family. The Globemaster has a history with the old Constellation watches. In the past, there used to be a legal issue with the name Constellation in the USA, so Omega used Globemaster instead. This was only for a short period though, and only few of those watches are around.Omega Globemaster ReviewEven though the in-depth Omega Globemaster review as pointed out above contain...
Today well take a look at a significant watch in the history of dive watches: the Jenny Caribbean 1500. Just to clear the air preemptively, the name on the dial states Philip Watch, but as Ill touch upon later, Jenny did build the watch. Perhaps innovation was easier in the 1960s because the market was comparatively wide open and hungry, but with the Caribbean, we shall see how David actually stood up to the Goliaths of the era. #TBT is here and its time to go deep!The Jenny Caribbean 1500 is from the family of the first commerically available 1000M diversJenny (as always said, pronounced like Yenny and not like the character in Forest Gump) was founded in Switzerland in 1963 and basically f...
Glashtte Original Sixties CollectionThe Glashtte Original Sixties collection is based on the caliber 70.1 and 70.3 watches that this manufacture produced in the, well, 1960s. Personally, I know Glashtte Original best for its Senator collection and collection of sports watches that they produced years ago, by the name of Sport Evolution. That has been discontinued a while ago, and Glashtte Original now focuses on more classic watches. One of these collections is the Sixties collection, consisting of three different timepieces.A classic three-hand piece simply called Sixties, one with big date called Sixties Panorama Date and a Sixties Chronograph. Glashtte Original gave us the opportunit...
A couple of months ago, Robert-Jan had the opportunity to give an overview of the new Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean Deep Black collection. The watches are an interesting move from Omega as they were introduced outside of Basel and the debut actually occurred in New York. There s no doubt that it has made waves.? We received a lot of traffic on the article and while most found the watches attractive, most wanted to see them in the metal C umm, ceramic as it were C before rendering judgment. I was of similar opinion, so when I found out that the collection was on a roadshow across the European Omega boutiques, I jumped at the chance to see them in Frankfurt. While my pictures wont get you any c...
Olympic WatchesSince we are in the middle of the Olympic Games 2016 I thought it would be nice to publish a Watches & Pencils special with a gold angle. We take a look at a few (historic) Olympic watches and try to reveal their sportive core. Most of these watches are quite rare so I needed to look up for pictures on forums and shops. I would like to thank everyone who gave permission to use their pictures in this article.HistoryWhen you do a random search on the web for a sport related watch you will hit one which is related to the Olympic Games sooner or later. Most of the time the watch will be an Omega. If we take a closer look into the history of the Olympics it is actually quite l...
Drive de Cartier- Mens Only CartierLast January when Cartier presented the ‘Drive de Cartier‘ watches at the 2016 SIHH in Geneva, there was a lot of traffic at the Cartier booth. Almost every journalist talked amongst each other about this new watch, in the corridors. Cartier is always presenting quite a few watches at the annual show in Geneva, but its not every year that ‘La Maison launches a steel mens only model, in the main stream category.?Well a?mens watch ‘the Drive certainly is, not because of its robust dimension of 40 x 40mm, since ladies wear any size these days, but because of its masculine styling?and details.– The Drive on my 18cm wrist –H...
Popular WatchesOne of the things that fascinates me about the watch industry is that there are so many watch brands out there, with so many watch models to choose from. Yet, most people (including myself) find them selves keep getting back to some of the obvious choices. At least the watches that I think that are very obvious. Our colleagues from the German WatchTime website did some research together with watch market platform Chrono24, to identify the top 10 most popular watches.These watches are?the most sought-after models?on Chrono24, a website that has over 80 million pageviews a month. We?show you the top 10 most popular watches on Chrono24, searched-for between January 2016 and June ...
Reader s StoryWe received a?letter?from Indonesian watch collector Ruby about his Omega Speedmaster Mark 4.5. There are more of those around of course, but Ruby found one in NOS (New Old Stock) condition. Complete with box and papers.Ruby started his watch collection in November 2013, when he purchased a Seiko World Time 50th Anniversary watch. Ever since, he collects mechanical Seiko chronographs but also has a weak spot for Omega. Besides the Speedmaster Mark 4.5 we will talk about today, he has a Speedmaster Professional Apollo XI with caliber 863 movement and a gold-capped Constellation caliber 751. Both in awesome condition.Speedmaster Mark 4.5But let s have a look at his Omega Speedmas...
EternaBefore I start with the Eterna Super KonTiki Chronograph review, a few words on the company first. Eterna has a long history that goes all the way back to 1856. However, it wasn t called Eterna until 1905 (but?Dr. Girard & Schild, after its founders). Before I jump to mentioning watches, Eterna is also known for ETA. ETA used to be their?subsidiary company for creating movements for their own watches as well as for other brands. Best known is their Eterna-matic movement, which resulted in the Eterna logo with its five ball bearings. ETA became part of what we know today as Swatch Group. Eterna has been in different hands since 1982 (including Porsche Design) but since a couple of y...
VAPAUS was founded by British brothers, Oliver and Rudi Laing, out of a desire to create a legacy of magnificent, vintage inspired timepieces. The ambitious pair state openly that they are striving to create a new European brand placed to sit beside NOMOS, Stowa and Sinn in terms of beauty quality and technical specification. Commenting, Rudi stated: We are well aware that we have set a herculean goal; but we did so safe in the knowledge that we would be much more motivated to strive to place among the leaders of the genre, than to languish among the more compromised alternatives; for when it comes to quality, we see these three extraordinary brands as setting the bar for transcendent, minim...
SUBDELTAA group of Dutch watch enthusiasts under the name of SUBDELTA is now offering their 2nd timepiece. That s not entirely true by the way, as (almost) the same group built the P1lot One watch already in 2014/2015. In 2016, they decided to move on to a different watch project and came up with the SUBDELTA name. Anyway, their first commercial watch was the SUBDELTA Periscope, that they introduced in 2016. You can find it here.ACEFor 2017, they designed and developed a watch called SUBDELTA ACE. This is their 2017 project, and currently ready for order. Even better, you can get a nice discount after you finished reading this article.Hans de Ree of SUBDELTA sent me the prototype of the 2017...
King Seiko versus Grand SeikoYou can t imagine this today, but back in the 1960 s, Seiko made two of its manufactories?compete with?each other. These two plants were?Suwa Seikosha and?Daini Seikosha. The objective was simple, to design beautiful watches and create the most accurate movements. Suwa Seikosha introduced the very first Grand Seiko in 1960. Not much later, in 1961, Daini Seikosha came with the first King Seiko. The rivalry went on until the 1970 s. This history is documented everywhere on the internet, yet official documentation is not really available on the subject (or only in Japanese language).Grand Seiko is pretty well known. After an absence of 24 years, not counting the qu...
Luminor MarinaLast week I attended the introduction of a couple of new Panerai models. Their most recognizable watch, the Luminor Marina, received an update.Now, I don t want to ruin a party, but changing or even slightly modifying an iconic watch can be very dangerous. We ve seen that escalating with a couple of brands, including (remember their initial 39mm Explorer, or what about the Day-Date II. Both short lived.). Anyway, while I was holding my breath, Panerai built up the tension by showing a bit of background information first.I assume you are familiar with Panerai, we covered it many times, so I am going to skip the history lessons. Important to know is that Panerai has been a manuf...
Reader s SpeedmastersThere is nothing that beats a real reader s story or experience in my opinion. At least, those are the stories I like to read myself. Today and in the coming period, we will have a couple of these stories for you. I also like to ask you that whenever you think you have a great Speedmaster story to share, please send us a note.Speedmaster CK2998-6 FAPJohn contacted me a few weeks ago that he owns this beautiful Speedmaster CK2998-6 FAP watch. FAP stands for?Fuerza Aerea del Per (Peruvian Airforces) and they ordered watches from different brands (e.g. ). Besides the Speedmaster, Omega also shipped Seamaster 300 models to the FAP.From PeruJohn was contacted by someone?who ...
