INTRODUCING: The Tudor Black Bay Chrono Dark
Tudor has decided to honour its partnership with New Zealand’s All Blacks the only way it knows how … with a limited edition watch, the Tudor Black Bay Chrono Dark. Made to not only pay tribute to the All Blacks’ illustrious history, which dates back to 1884, the Chrono Dark also celebrates the rugby team’s 2019 title defence of the Rugby World Cup. Just 1181 watches will be created initially, and we know what you’re thinking: what’s the significance of 1181? Well, that’s how many Kiwi rugby players have been selected for the country’s national squad since its inception. What’s even more unique is that for every new player added to the All Blacks roster, Tudor will create an additional example of the Chrono Dark. Based on the standard 41mm Black Bay Chrono, the limited edition timepiece has been styled to mimic the All Blacks’ famous playing jersey, a feat that Tudor has accomplished by applying a matt black PVD-treated coating (as seen on the Tudor Heritage Black Bay Dark). Originally developed by NASA and employed in several of their space programs, PVD, or Physical Vapor Deposition, is a thin-film technology that can be applied to almost any inorganic material.…
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Russian watchmaker Raketa has just released a modern interpretation of its classic Raketa Copernic wristwatch, and it is a uniquely compelling timepiece. First created in the 1980s in the twilight of the Soviet Union, the original Copernic was made to honour the renaissance-era Polish astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus. Like the original, the new homage piece has a fascinating and novel dial that portrays the earth and moon’s rotation around the sun in space. As a result, the hour hand is styled as a golden orb that represents the sun, while the minute hand is a large, hollow silver ring that depicts the moon. The gorgeous gradient dial blends blue and black together in a mesmerising illustration of outer space, and while it may seem overtly unusual to some, we reckon it’s downright charming. In addition, Raketa actually went to some lengths to ensure that the new Copernic really did justice to the infinite expanse of space. The Russian watchmaker even consulted the celebrated Russian cosmonaut Alexander Ivanchenko, who helped design the dial. Available in either steel or blackened steel, the Copernic’s 40.5mm case houses Raketa’s calibre 2615 movement, which returns a fairly impressive accuracy rating of -10/+20 seconds a…
The horological mavericks at Urwerk have just dropped their latest wristwatch and it is, pardon the pun, out of this world! The Urwerk UR-100 SpaceTime is a stratospherically cool and novel concept for a timepiece, and one that seems very, very complicated indeed. Essentially, the SpaceTime will not only tell its lucky owners the time, but the distance travelled on Earth and the distance travelled by Earth. Much like other watches in Urwerk’s back catalogue, their latest timepiece employs the use of the watchmaker’s famed orbital hour satellites and striking red-tipped arrow minute pointer, which makes its way across the bottom of the svelte case. However, once the minute pointer has travelled past the 60-minute marker, it then makes its way underneath the first sub-dial and then resurfaces at the 10 o’clock position to display the distance that us humanoids have statically travelled on Earth. The SpaceTime can calculate this by portraying the Earth’s average speed of rotation around the equator in 20-minute intervals, in which time it will shift approximately 555 km. Once it reaches the end of this sub-dial, the red-tipped arrow makes its way underneath another sub-dial and then reappears at the two o’clock position on the dial to exhibit the Earth’s…
For many of us out there, the dream of one day owning a grail watch, like an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak 15500 or Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711/1A, is going to remain just that … a dream. And the funny part is, it’s got nothing to do with the amount of spondulicks in your bank account! No, chances are that even if you do have the cold hard cash to buy one of these wrist-worn idols, you’re still not going to be able to get your hands on one. But never fear, all hope is not lost, because there are some great steel sports watches equipped with an integrated bracelet out there that should definitely be on your radar. Girard-Perregaux Laureato Now we know what you’re going to say, but you’d be wrong, because the Gerard-Perregaux Laureato was actually released one year before Patek Philippe’s Nautilus. And it is a genuinely impressive watch, not least because GP has been creating timekeeping devices for more than 160 years at their headquarters in La Chaux-de-Fonds. This variant of the Laureato, complete with its wonderful blue “Clous de Paris” patterned dial, features GP’s in-house, self-winding calibre. GP01800 movement and is capable of a minimum of 54 hours of…
Editor’s note: The dust has well and truly settled on this year’s watch releases, and they’re starting to filter out into the world and onto wrists. This is as true with Tudor as it is with anyone else. Though we haven’t seen any P01 watches out in the wild yet, we thought the timing was right to take another look at their 2019 highlights … It’s testament to the power and ongoing evolution of Tudor’s blue-chip Black Bay family that our top three picks from Baselworld 2019 are all Black Bays, and also — from a distance at least — look very different indeed. Without a doubt, the most discussed and most genuinely novel watch of the bunch (and perhaps of the whole fair) is the Black Bay P01. While the dial bears a lot of the hallmarks of the Black Bay, the case is Something. Else. Entirely. Long, with a blocky crown guard at four, and a steel bi-directional 12-hour bezel that’s held in place by the articulated bracelet end-link at 12. I’m pretty sure absolutely no one saw this coming, and people are taking their time to get used to the concept. I will say though, this watch is very…
People who care about watches enough to be able to drop reference numbers and movement names can sometimes forget that for some — even many — the act of wearing a watch at all is a foreign one. The shift away from wrist-based time-telling to using our phones has been a big concern for the watch industry, and the rediscovery of the wrist afforded by devices like the Apple Watch has been one of the big silver linings of that device’s sweeping popularity. This article, from one of Australia’s largest daily papers — The Age/Sydney Morning Herald — perfectly encapsulates this shift away from the wristwatch as a norm, and what it’s like to go back. Very relatable, and a nice reminder that a good wristwatch is about much more than the name on the dial. Read the story here. 