Inspiration for watches can come from a lot of places, and industrial design is a frequent launching spot. The Swiss Railway watch is a perfect example. Now, with the Normalzeit Wrist Watch, a new historical standardizing clock is being ported to your wrist, distinctive case at all. This project, available at select locations, honors the Vienna Cube Clock, a fixture of city life there for over 100 years.
If you are a fan of watches that light up the night, you have plenty of options. There are the heavily-lumed watches to go for (such as the Seiko Monster), or you can go in a different direction, with watches that rely on tritium tubes for their illumination. One of the brands we have featured in the past with these tubes is British company Nite Watches. Until now, all of their watches have featured quartz movements. That changes with the launch of the Nite Icon Automatic.
I first saw the Kloker Watch on their own web site, before it was launched on Kickstarter, and I was interested in the project. Life being what it is, I did not have a chance to cover it right when it launched, but I did see that they received a lot of coverage, both from watch bloggers and from gadget watchers. Now, with a little time remaining before the project closes, Klokers introduced a second model into the mix.
I don’t see a lot of watches with tritium gas tubes for illumination, so I was pretty interested in checking out the two Chronologia Dive Watches, the R004 and R004 Chronograph. I was also a tad skeptical, since I do have an automatic preference for automatics, but I found that I really enjoyed wearing both of these watches (though the 3-hander is more my style).
When the biggest name in the watch industry decides to get into the smart watch/fitness tracker business, you expect a watch that is made for the masses. What you don’t expect is a watch made for a niche sport; but then again, Swatch does not do things in the normal way. The Swatch Touch Zero One is, as the name implies, the first watch in a planned ecosystem of fitness watches tied to the sports that Swatch supports.
If you stick around long enough, everything old becomes new and hip again, and now it is the pocket watch’s turn. And keep in mind, the very first wrist watches for the masses were just pocket watches with lugs, so it seems only fitting to circle back to our roots. Of course, the Itero Pocket Watch, currently funding on Kickstarter, updates those roots in some modern ways.
Mokume-gane is a traditional Japanese metalworking technique where different metals are fused together in order to create a billet with a layered look, which is then worked into whatever shape is needed. This 17th Century technique was developed for ornate Samurai swords that were decorative status symbols. Now, this layered look is being used as a watch case in the H2O Kalmar 2 Mokume Gane Watches, available for pre-order on their web site.
We first brought you word of the Manchester Watch Works Vergennes and Westminster watches not all that long ago (link). Of the two trench watch-inspired pieces, I found myself drawn the most to the white-dialed one. As fortune would have it, there was one of those available for us to go hands-on with, even though the Kickstarter project (link) is still running. Without further ado, let’s get into our review of the Manchester Watch Works Vergennes.
The words Duke and Orient don’t often go together in my mind, so when I first saw the Orient Duke Automatic Executive Sport Watch, I was intrigued. I thought John Wayne but instead I saw a classically designed mechanical dress watch under $300.
While we have covered quite a few different Kickstarter-sourced watch brands (due to the diligent coverage of Matt), there have not been all that many that we have seen repeat their efforts on the crowd-funding platform. One of the brands that I was impressed with via some time with a prototype (here; of note, we are working on a review of an automatic update to the watch) is back, this time heading back to an era where pocket watches jumped to the wrist of servicemen. Those are colloquially known as trench watches, and ManchesterWatchWorks is back with their Westminster and Vergennes models to commemorate that era.
