Stepping into Vianney Halter’s workshop in Sainte-Croix is an unforgettable experience. Inside, a wonderful mix of old watchmaking machines are humming alongside aeroplane parts, monumental clocks, books, drawings, engines and raw materials. It is exactly the workshop you have dreamed about, and yet everything is a surprise. Xavier Markl, MONOCHROME – How did a Parisian […]
How is life as a jeweler and luxury watch retailer in 2020 with the pandemic? We talk with Alon Ben-Joseph from ACE Jewelers in Amsterdam about a year of running the brick & mortar business and online business with Corona challenges.
Genus appeared on the independent watchmaking scene in 2019 with the GNS 1.2 WG. A watch in a class of its own, the GNS 1.2 is technically complex and features one of the most fascinating time displays we have seen recently. This radical creation received a well-deserved industry accolade with the 2019 Mechanical Exception Prize […]
A few weeks ago, a Philippe Dufour Simplicity “20th Anniversary” was the highlight of the Phillips “Retrospective 2000-2020” Geneva auction. The watch – marked 00/20 – hammered for over CHF 1.3 million. Admittedly, Philippe Dufour is one of the most respected craftsmen of the industry, and his watches are regarded as the ultimate expression of […]
Josh Shapiro seems like an unlikely person to help restore traditional watchmaking in the United States. He started as a pole vault coach and a school teacher before becoming the administrator of a private school. Growing up in a machine shop gave him an appreciation for metals and working with his hands, and a flashy […]
De Bethune is truly a brand apart in the Swiss watchmaking industry, and not only for its unique and emblematic designs. There’s a lot more to the brand than meets the eye. In 2002, two men, David Zanetta, watch expert and collector, and Denis Flageollet, a fourth-generation master watchmaker, launched the brand. In 2010, an […]
Each member of the MONOCHROME team has their favourites amongst the many brands and watches we share with all of you. And for me, one of the brands I have been following closely since I joined MONOCHROME is the Swedish brand of Gustafsson & Sjögren, or GoS in short. The duo of Patrik Sjögren and Johan Gustafson offers very unique watches incorporating hand-forged Damascus steel for the cases, bezels, crowns, dials and more. So when I learned of the opportunity to chat with the owner of a very special 1-of-5 GoS Skadi, I just had to follow through.
Grand Seiko is a brand apart. As one of the few luxury watch brands from Japan – and the only one with that level of production – there is a lot more behind a Grand Seiko watch than its origins. Indeed, after becoming available worldwide in 2010 and as a stand-alone brand in 2017 (with […]
The attraction, the reasons that drive us towards a certain kind of watch, the lack of rationale behind the love for a timepiece… and then the hunt for THAT special one. Behind most watch acquisitions there’s a story, a motivation to go for one particular version and not another, subjective factors that explain why one […]
During our visit to Geneva Watch Days, the only main watch-related event organised this year in Europe, we were able to discover some of the timepieces introduced earlier this year in the metal, as well as all-new models from more than 15 brands. One of these exhibitors was Girard-Perregaux, which released a wide variety of […]