All Entries in the "Featured Articles" Category

TIME TEST: Signed, Sealed, Delivered

How much do you know about the various quality seals and certificates awarded to watch movements these days? Find out by taking the WatchTime test. As always, the answers appear at the bottom.

The Man Behind the Brand: George Graham

Sixteen years ago, two young men born and raised in the Swiss watch town of La Chaux-de-Fonds and working in the watch industry teamed up with the notion of getting their own watch brand. The question confronting Eric Loth and Pierre-André Finazzi was which brand? The Swiss names they wanted, they couldn’t afford. The French brands they could afford, they didn’t want.

Geneva Unconventionals

Every year, Richemont Group’s luxury watch brands, plus a handful of large, independent brands, exhibit their new watches at SIHH in Geneva’s labyrinthine Palexpo Center. This year, 38 small, independent watch brands put on their own show called the Geneva Time Exhibition (GTE) at the International Geneva Conference Center, in the heart of downtown, near the famed Place des Nations.

Vacheron Constantin La Symbolique des Laques: 600 Years In The Making

At SIHH, Vacheron Constantin unveiled the new Métiers d’Art collection, La Symbolique des Laques. The collection combines two ancient arts: watchmaking and maki-e. Vacheron, which dates to 1755, joins with Japanese maki-e masters Zôhiko, founded in 1661 and together, their more than 600 years of history combine to produce these masterpieces of functional art.

Trivia Quiz: Brand Ambassadors

How well do you know your brand ambassadors? Grab a pencil or fire up your word processor and find out. We’ve assembled 20 ambassadors and 20 watch brands for you to match up. Some are current, some are from days gone by. Some are well known, others are more obscure. As always, the answers appear at the end. Good luck!

BNB: RIP

Movement maker BNB Concept is out of business. But its founder, and many of its watchmakers, have found a new gig.

Trivia Quiz: Watches in the Movies

In the February issue of WatchTime, we reveal which watch Richard Dreyfuss wore as shark researcher Matt Hooper in Jaws. Not all movie watches take decades to identify. Test your knowledge in this quiz to see how well you know your Hollywood watch trivia. Hints in the form of answers appear at the end.

THE MAN BEHIND THE BRAND: Daniel JeanRichard

(This is the first of a series of articles on historical watchmakers whose names have been revived as contemporary watch brands.)

In 1986, Luigi (Gino) Macaluso, a Swiss watch distributor in Italy, bought the rights to the name Daniel JeanRichard from Lemania, the Swiss movement manufacturer. Daniel JeanRichard was not a watch brand. It is the name of a 17th century Swiss watchmaker, who was an extremely important, if obscure, figure in the development of the Swiss watch industry.

TIME TEST: Famous Firsts

The first month of a new decade: what better time to mull over other promising (albeit not always successful) beginnings? Test your knowledge of a dozen watch-world firsts (the answers are at the end).

The New Man: Zenith CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour

Jean-Frédéric Dufour previously worked for Chopard, the Swatch Group and Ulysse Nardin. He now directs the Zenith manufacture, a new role which he took on when he became the brand’s president and CEO on June 1, 2009. In this interview, he shares some of his ideas about Zenith’s future after the departure of his predecessor Thierry Nataf.