As we previously announced, WatchTime is bringing the WatchTime New York event concept to the West Coast on May 3 – 4, 2019. We’ll be taking over the Hudson Loft space in Downtown Los Angeles — just minutes from Staples Center — for two days to bring you the best in luxury timepieces. For those who have attended the New York show before, you can expect a similar experience, with brands of all sizes and price points taking part; an abundance of panel discussions featuring industry VIPs, brand executives, and high-caliber collectors; wine and whisky tastings; and plenty of opportunities to spend some quality time with your fellow enthusiasts. We’ll be collaborating with our longtime event partner Watch Anish once again, and will be working with the renowned California retailer Bhindi Jewelers for the first time.
Today, we’re happy to announce the final four of the 30+ brands confirmed as exhibitors for the show. Click here to see the full list of brands we’ve announced so far.
Kerbedanz
Kerbedanz, founded in 2011 in Neuchâtel by current president Tigran Kerbedanz, is known to watch aficionados chiefly for one significant accomplishment: producing the wristwatch with the world’s largest tourbillon, the aptly named Kerbedanz Maximus. With a tourbillon cage measuring a colossal 27 mm in diameter. Such a sizeable mechanism required a total re-imagining of the movement construction, including the use of lightweight titanium parts in the cage that enables the tourbillon regulator, despite its size, to make a full rotation on its axis every six minutes. The movement, Caliber KRB-08, consists of 415 total parts, with the tourbillon comprising 73 of them. Telling time on the Maximus’s expansive, openworked dial, however, is surprisingly traditional: the hour and minute hands extend off of the tourbillon cage and are mounted on geared discs, pointing to the hour and minute on sharply inclined rose gold indexes. Altogether, the Kerbedanz Maximus comes in at a hearty 49 mm. It’s limited to 99 total pieces, with the price available upon request.
Reservoir
Reservoir, a brand founded by Frenchmen and made in Switzerland, describes its mission statement as “tak[ing] its inspiration from the functionalities and the aesthetic appeal of measurement instruments of days gone by.” Aesthetically, this is expressed as dueling complications for the watches’ time displays. Hours are indicated via an aperture in the lower hemisphere of the dial; minutes are read courtesy of a retrograde display that stretches around the periphery of the upper two-thirds of the dial. A power-reserve display is located directly underneath the hour window at the bottom of each dial, using either a hand or a sequence of three-dimensional spheres to indicate how much power is left. In some models, a date window is placed to the right of the power reserve. This dial layout, meant to recall dashboard instruments, is consistent throughout all of Reservoir’s various collections, which lean on automotive, avionic, or nautical motifs to stand out. Within these collections are a variety of subcollections. The car-inspired models are the most popular and come in three different designs: Longbridge (British Racing Green model pictured below), GT Tour, and Supercharged. The airplane-influenced models are split into either the Airfight or Airfight Jet, and the nautical-style models lean on a submarine style Tiefenmesser and Tiefenmesser SH ranges.
Christophe Claret
For years Christophe Claret labored in relative obscurity creating horological masterpieces sold under the names of others. He grew up in Lyon, France, and even as a child, he enjoyed disassembling and reassembling watch movements. At 16, he entered the watchmaking school in Geneva, and following graduation, he restored antique timepieces. His career was launched at the 1987 Basel Fair, when the owner of a major Swiss watch company asked Claret to develop an exclusive minute repeater movement. On the strength of that commission, Claret founded a company with two other talented watchmakers and in 1992, bought out his partners to become sole shareholder and renamed the company Christophe Claret S.A. In 2000, to cement his independence, Claret purchased an early-20th century manor house in Le Locle known as Le Soleil d’Or (The Golden Sun), originally built by Urban Jürgensen. The company had already created more than 64 movements, including 50 world firsts, for various watch-industry clients when Claret, the man behind the curtain, finally released the first timepiece widely marketed under his own name. This year, Claret is celebrating the 30th anniversary of his manufacture and the 10th anniversary of his brand. To commemorate the occasion, he’s released the Angelico that features a cable-and-fusee mechanism and a six-minute tourbillon regulator with a long detent escapement.
Cyrus
Geneva-based micro-manufacture Cyrus is named for Cyrus the Great, a king of ancient Babylon, and all the timepieces in its flagship Klepcys and Kuros collections have casebacks featuring a replica of a 2,500-year old Babylonian coin, one of the world’s first currencies. Designed by Swiss watchmaker Jean-François Mojon, whose has worked on haute horlogerie projects for MB&F, Harry Winston, and others, Cyrus’s lineup of high-complication, limited-edition timepieces includes chronographs, moon-phases, mechanical alarms (you can read a review of the Klepcys Réveil here), and an innovative vertically inclined tourbillon. For 2019, the brand has unveiled a skeletonized take on the Klepcys Vertical Tourbillon.
