Long read: A week in Sydney with Aldis Hodge – Hollywood's only watchmaker Pt 1
Aldis Hodge and I are in an Uber, in Sydney. I am in the front seat. Aldis is in the back, with his sketch-book out, trying to work on a watch design that is due to his CAD engineer yesterday. The driver is driving. Very, very badly. He starts talking about his history with various drugs while making erratic lane changes. 10 grams of cannabis a week. Amphetamines. Cocaine, “that stuff is so good it’s evil!” While he talks, he pumps on the accelerator, then takes his foot off altogether. The speed surges up and down, up and down. Nauseating waves. “But I’m clean now…” he says, before shouting “most of the time!” I glance back at Aldis with wide eyes. His sketch book is now back in his bag and he is looking at the ceiling. Please just get us to our destination alive. Please just get us to our destination alive. Please just get us to our destination alive. I really need to see the second series of City on a Hill. Aldis really needs to shoot it. My daughter has a birthday coming up. The AD just called and my root beer is waiting for me back…
The post Long read: A week in Sydney with Aldis Hodge – Hollywood’s only watchmaker Pt 1 appeared first on Time and Tide Watches.
The email from Nick Kenyon arrived in response to one of my article submissions. I’ll paraphrase here: “We were talking about whether mentions of watches in popular music has an impact on demand … do you think there is some data somewhere you could use to look at that question?” My immediate reaction had two parts. First, just happiness at what a fascinating topic this is. And second: unending gratitude for the generosity of the “home office” in sharing this story idea with me. I’d wager there are very few watch enthusiasts whose Instagram streams did not contain a reference to Drake’s recent post about an emerald-flooded Patek Philippe Nautilus 5726. Last month GQ dubbed the musician John Mayer the “Watch World’s Most Influential Collector”. It is enough to make one wonder if the connection between music and horology has ever been stronger. But let’s kick it ol’ skool for a paragraph. It’s 1986. MTV is five years old and actually playing music videos. I’ve bought a rectangular piece of plastic with two holes and a tiny window. It contains polyester “tape” coated in ferric oxide and cobalt. This material has been magnetised in order to store an unprecedented album:…
Editor’s note: As we’re sure most of you reading this are already aware, Baselworld 2020 is officially dead. Yes, despite the perplexing decision from officials to say that the world’s biggest watch fair had been “postponed” to the end of January 2021, it has, like so many other trade shows this year, fallen victim to the rampant contagion that is COVID-19 aka Coronavirus. But, things haven’t exactly been brilliant for the watch fair of late anyway, and some are even speculating that this latest tribulation could be the final nail in Basel’s coffin. After attending last year’s event, Sandra Lane gave her impressions on the state of Baselworld, and it’s definitely worth a read. It’s now 10 days since Baselworld 2019 ended – but it feels like yesterday. Or half a lifetime ago. That’s what a week of viewing hundreds of new watches through a haze of severe jet lag, industrial quantities of caffeine and minimal sleep does to you. But with time comes recovery, and with that comes perspective. So now seems like a good moment to look back on what was always going to be one of the most keenly anticipated Baselworlds in the fair’s century-plus existence. Keenly anticipated…
Clive Cussler, famed novelist and maritime explorer, died on February 24, aged 88. The writer was a larger-than-life character, and his series of novels featuring the renegade adventurer, underwater explorer and treasure hunter Dirk Pitt, such as Raise the Titanic! and Sahara, captivated a generation of avid readers. Cussler’s novels also brought many people’s attention to DOXA watches, as both the prolific fictional protagonist and Cussler himself always wore an orange DOXA watch. Twenty-two years ago, CBS News interviewed the novelist, which tracked his history as an amateur writing enthusiast, right up to the time that his novels and movies were being consumed by millions of people. In addition, and in classic Cussler fashion, the start of the short interview starts on New York’s East River, with the novelist searching for a sunken submarine. It’s a great interview, and if you’ve got the time, we definitely recommend you watch it.
Editor’s note: Time+Tide Watches is very proud to be the first official media partner of the Horological Society of New York in history. Over this weekend, the HSNY ran their first watchmaking courses in Australia, and Roman S, a longtime reader and subject of several T+T stories (he has spectacular and unusual taste in watches), put pen to paper on his experience of completing ‘Watchmaking 101-103’, a class run in conjunction with The Hour Glass. For many watch enthusiasts, the idea of spending hours of intense concentration at a watchmaker’s bench holds a certain amount of nostalgia and appeal. Whilst tremendous advances in automation have allowed robots to step into the space once solely occupied by human hands, the humble watchmaker’s bench is still an object of pride and devotion for the practice of advanced skill and mechanical ingenuity. Thus, it was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that I signed up to the “Horology 101-103” class hosted by the Horological Society of New York (HSNY), The Hour Glass and Time+Tide in Melbourne. The Horological Society of New York was established in 1866, and has been providing classes to the public since the 1950s. More recently, HSNY has started touring watchmaking…
It was only a day ago that the watch world was reacting to the cancellation of Watches & Wonders Geneva (formerly SIHH), as a result of the increasing spread of the Coronavirus, and wondering if Baselworld would suffer the same fate in 2020. Overnight, the answer was given, as Baselworld announced that it would be “postponed” until January 2021 due to an official ban by the Swiss authorities on large-scale public events. This is not a surprising decision by Baselworld management, but still a significant one in the context of the challenges the fair has faced in recent years, as well as the uninterrupted hosting of the event since 1917. “We deeply regret having had to postpone the event as planned due to the coronavirus, in full consideration of the needs of the watch and jewellery industry to be able to benefit from the platform to develop their business,” the Managing Director of Baselworld, Michel Loris-Melikoff, said. “This decision has been all the more difficult in view of all the positives that have been achieved through listening and dialogue over the last few months, which resulted in new concepts and new solutions, that have attracted exhibitors to return and new ones…
The perpetual calendar watch is among the most useful complicated watches, as well as one of the most mechanically sophisticated – and it truly comes into its own today, a leap year day. Its complexity is what sets it apart from other calendar watches. The simplest calendar watch has just a date function, driven by gears that are toothed to measure cycles of 31 days. Consequently, it needs to be manually advanced at the end of any month that has fewer days – from September 30 to October 1, for example. Thanks to extra sets of gears, an annual calendar can differentiate between months with 30 and 31 days – but still, at the end of February, it must be manually advanced to March 1. Add even more gears and you get a perpetual calendar – quantième perpétuel in French, often abbreviated to QP. Not only does it correct itself every month, regardless of the number of days, it also takes into account the occurrence of leap years and, consequently, will display the correct date, day, month and moon phase in perpetuity – as long as the movement keeps running. There’s an anomaly, though: according to the Gregorian calendar, only one…
Any type of chronograph is going to be an exceedingly handy complication for a wristwatch to possess. However, while the function of the chronograph is broadly the same no matter what make or model of watch you go for, they aren’t all aesthetically equal — not by a long shot. No, the best-looking chronographs on the market generally all have one thing in common: Bi-Compax Dials. That’s right, the simple and elegant look of two sub-dials, traditionally located at three and nine o’clock, provides a great amount of symmetry and harmony that, in turn, lends itself to a more arresting overall look. We’ve chosen three great-looking chronographs for the discerning timekeeper. Enjoy. HAMILTON INTRA-MATIC AUTO CHRONO BLUE DIAL The Hamilton Intra-Matic Auto Chrono blue dial is an absolute peach that stands out in this collection of very solid watches as something a little special. Powered by an adapted Valjoux 7753, this watch has a longer than average power reserve of 60 hours. Hamilton’s watchmakers have optimised one of the most epic workhorses in horology for a longer run time between winds – despite the movement operating at a standard 28,800 vibrations per hour. Ref No: H38416541 / Case size: 40mm /…
According to many, many news stories over the last 12 months, India is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country within the next decade, with the current population of roughly 1.37 billion set to skyrocket. It’s a country on the up and up, and its people are developing quite the taste for timepieces as a result. With that in mind, we thought we’d take a look at the top five most popular watch brands in the world’s second-most inhabited country: No. 1 – Titan A joint collaboration between two of the largest companies in India, Tata Group & Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation, Titan is a watchmaker that aims to make accessible, functional and good-looking timepieces that aren’t going to break the bank. Established in 1984, Titan is also one of the older horological creators in the country and, as such, their timepieces are very popular. No. 2 – Daniel Klein No, it’s not a collaboration between Daniel Wellington and Calvin Klein (quit the sniggering). In fact, Daniel Klein is a South African watchmaker that produce a great many inexpensive and versatile watches. The brand has really been embraced by the Indian community of late. For whatever…
Editor’s note: The Minimalist watch brand is an unrelenting feature in the Sponsored section of your Instagram feed, and isn’t going away anytime soon. So if you were thinking of capitalising on some horological high-street chic without wasting any time in learning about the history of watchmaking, please enjoy this step-by-step guide to starting your own minimalist watch brand. It’s not as hard as you think. We all have friends who wear watches made by brands like Daniel Wellington and The Horse. We also all know that these watches are, essentially, identical. Yet somehow these simple quartz dress watch lookalikes seem to net their savvy owners massive piles of dosh. Some of us may have even wondered about starting our own minimalist brand like this (I know I have). Well, wonder no more as someone (who has chosen to remain anonymous) has uploaded a helpful guide to Imgur. Here’s the original, but we’ve reposted it in full below. Bravo, mystery writer. Enjoy.