Watch Dandy

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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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