Watch Dandy

It’s very easy to get caught up in the aesthetics of a watch and subsequently make a judgement call based purely on how it looks … we’ve all done it before. And that’s not to say that looks aren’t important — they are crucial. But equally, if not more important than the way a mechanical watch looks is, well … its mechanism. A timepiece’s movement is its heart, its soul — it is the thing that gives it life. Because of this, I reckon more appreciation and admiration should be heaped at a watch’s case back, rather than its front. Nicholas Hacko, the only watch manufacturer in the entirety of Australia, recently uploaded a wonderful video to YouTube that showcases the various bespoke tools and machines used to make their latest watch, the Nicholas Hacko NH2 Timascus. It only lasts for a couple of minutes, but it gives you a pretty profound appreciation for just how intricate and precise the art of watchmaking is. Additionally, it did, for myself at least, fill me with a great sense of patriotic pride knowing that there are still people in this country keen to make mechanical things from scratch, to challenge the status quo laid…

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While a great many of the best watches unveiled in 2019 were vintage-inspired homages, there were also plenty of timepieces released that were resolutely modern and quite eccentric. And while we’d like to mention all of them, we’ve narrowed it down to these, the five quirkiest watches released in 2019: SWATCH FLYMAGIC The Flymagic is apparently a Swatch. But beyond the branding, the strap-fitting, the box, and the fact it is available in the Swatch shop, it’s not very Swatch at all. While it seems at first glance to be surprisingly expensive for a Swatch, the specs stack up. A Nivachron balance spring tops the bill, reputedly reducing the impact of magnetic fields on the watch by a factor of 20. And the mechanical movement has 66 parts. You get what you pay for, after all. Ref No: YHS100 / Case size: 45mm / Case material: Steel / Movement: Flymagic / Price: CHF 1500 GUCCI GRIP While Gucci is primarily a fashion label, the brand occasionally produces watches of stylistic note. While this quartz-powered, cushion-shaped timepiece is not going to take home any awards at the GPHG, it is actually pretty interesting. Yes, it looks like bathroom scales, but its…

The post Oddballs: 5 of the quirkiest watches released in 2019 appeared first on Time and Tide Watches.

The gauntlet has well and truly been thrown down on the polished concrete floors of Time+Tide’s headquarters in this week’s office row, as a truculent James Robinson asseverated that pocket watches in 2020 are about as useful as a solar powered watch in a sensory deprivation tank … that is to say, completely pointless. Deputy Editor Nicholas Kenyon was having none of it, however, and was locked-and-loaded with a counter argument that could’ve knocked Robinson’s Watch Rats socks clean off. Enjoy the figurative fisticuffs. Nick Kenyon – The For Argument Yes, the pocket watch is irrelevant, but so too is the wristwatch. In fact, it is the charm of a mechanical bygone era that makes collecting watches so interesting. You are engaged by the richness of the history of the watchmaking firm, the skill of the artisans producing the components, and what the watch says about the time in which it was made. The ’80s were awash with gold and two-tone watches thanks to the growth of Wall Street and the booming American economy. Watches from the ’40s were designed with a utilitarian focus, pared back to the single goal of communicating the time and nothing else. To disregard the…

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