Welcome back to our weekly installment, where we have a quick look at some interesting watches and articles that have popped up over the last week, as well as taking a second look at what some of our more popular articles this week were. Today, we’ll touch on the watch flood known as BaselWorld first thing. Then, we’ve got some history on a brand that has come on strong in the past year, as well as a wrist watch that actually has a functional hourglass in it. After those, we’ll highlight (as usual) some of our more popular posts from the last week. Read on to see what we’ve got in store for you.
Even if you only casually follow watch blogs other than ours, you couldn’t help but to notice that there have been a flood of new watch announcements, and a lot of the same live shots of these new watches popping up across the whole slate of properties. While this means you could head to any site (just about) to get an update on what’s going on at the show, I’m of course partial to aBlogtoWatch (given, you know, they’re our sister site and I write over there as well). You can check out all of their BaselWorld 2014 articles right here.
Arnold & Sons is likely a brand that you’ve become very acquainted with over the last year or two. Most of the online publications (ourselves included) have brought you word of the various models that have come out, some of which they’ve won some quite nice awards for. Have you ever wondered what, precisely, the history of the brand is? Sure, we may know the name of John Arnold (given the PR push the brand has had), but what about the history that happened after it’s founder got the ball rolling? Did you know there are even very early (and close) ties to Breguet? For more information, I recommend you check out this rather informative post over at Timezone.
When it comes to watches, if you trace the lineage back far enough, you’ll arrive at hourglasses. We may only use them to time turns in board games these days, but at one time, they were the height of timekeeping. Now, courtesy of Konstantin Chaykin, they’re moving from the height of history to some high-end horology. If you’re not familiar with Chaykin’s work, be prepared for quite a treat. He’s come up with some rather unique and completely interesting pieces, and this “Carpe Diem” timepiece. Along with engraving of Chronos, a zodiac time display, and the aforementioned hourglass, you get, oh, you know, a traditional time display. Even if you’re not in the mood to read the article, you owe it to yourself to check out the images in this writeup over at Monochrome.
And now, let’s come back to our own pages. First up, we’ve got a brand new release that we covered from Mondaine. They’re the brand more commonly known as the “Swiss Train” watch (and clock) folks, reproducing that iconic look. For their latest, they’re grabbing on to another icon – the Helvetica font. The choice has great ties to Switzerland (details are in the writeup), and keeps that clean look Mondaine is known for. You can see what John thought about the watches right here.
Next up, we’ve got a review from late last year that’s no stranger to popping up in these roundups, as it’s proven to be a popular one – the Shinola Brakeman. You can read more about the watch in my writeup, but I thought this was a good opportunity to bring up another bit of Shinola news. Just earlier this week, they announced that, starting March 27th, every Shinola watch will carry a limited lifetime guarantee. Basically, everything but the battery, strap, and buckle are covered, and will be repaired (or the watch will be replaced) free of charge. You can read up on all the details of the guarantee right here. This is the sort of thing that we hope to never have to use, but it also adds some nice peace of mind.
With that, we’ll wrap things up. As always, if there’s something you think we should be covering, feel free to drop us a line. If you bring something up that we end up writing about, we’ll be sure to tip our hats (electronically, if not literally) in your general direction.
Images courtesy of the original source
