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Waldan Adds Pastel Dials

American-based Waldan has added a trio of eye-catching pastel-dialed models to its Heritage Professional series of dressy, 40mm quartz-powered steel watches.

Offered as limited edition of 100 pieces in each of three colors, the new Waldan Bright Pastel series retains the high-value allure of the Heritage Professional line, but now adds a colorful twist with a choice of pink, yellow or light blue dials.

The three Waldan Heritage Professional Bright Pastel models.

The new series also underscores its fashionable mission with the advent of interchangeable contrast-stitched Elbamatt leather straps, now with quick release spring bars.

Each strap is equipped with a quick-release spring bar for easy mix and match options. Additional straps are $30.

Hand crafted in Italy, these straps add a matching finish to any watch in the series, and present the wearer with the option of purchasing additional straps to mix and match as desired. The straps are $30 and available from the Waldan website.

Waldan continues to power each watch in the series with an all-metal American- made Ameriquartz Caliber 70200 movement. Fine Timepiece Solutions, the Arizona-based manufacturer of the Ameriquartz movements, guarantees that its all-metal calibers are defect-free for a full five years. Price: $299.

 

Specifications: Waldan Heritage Professional Bright Pastel

(Three colors, each limited to 100 pieces)

Movement: American-made Ameriquartz caliber 70200 quartz movement, all metal, hand made, assembled and tested individually in the United States. Fully serviceable and warrantied for five years.

Dial: Canary Yellow, Sky Blue or Blush Pink with white applied Arabic numerals, steel hands, white outer dial rim with applied SuperLuminova plots. Sunken and diamond-cut subdial above 6pm for sub-seconds register with small red hand. Signed ‘Waldan, New York,’ ‘AMERIQUARTZ’ and ‘USA MOVT’.

Case: 316L stainless steel, two-piece, double stepped case with screw down back and Anti-Reflective treated flat sapphire crystal. 40mm diameter x 8.6mm thickness x 20mm lug width. Mixed finish with polished case and brushed lugs. Knurled crown signed “W” with multi gasket system for 5ATM water resistance. Case back signed.

Strap: Genuine Ambra Elbamatt leather with quick release spring bars, stainless steel buckle.

Price: $299

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The Watches

Eone Expands its Modern Montre à Tact

By Gary Girdvainis

When Eone watches first launched the Bradley edition, the design created by the recent MIT graduate Hyunsoo Kim was a modern quartz watch that made it easy for a sightless person to read the time. Kim developed a tactile system that allowed the wearer to relate the position of two mobile steel balls with fixed tactile points around the dial.

While this honorable cause may have birthed the design, the idea of a watch that could relay the time via touchpoints on the case is certainly not new. Notably, Breguet had created watches that could indicate the time via touch with his Tact watch, sold starting in 1799. In this pocket watch original the function was more for discretion while checking the time than servicing the blind.

An example of an early Breguet ‘montre à tact’ cylinder watch.

For Eone, success came quickly. A Kickstarter campaign in 2014 funded Eone to more than half a million dollars. With rave reviews by the watch and popular press, Eone firmly established itself in the watch world. Clearly the watch designed with a cause had found a much wider audience, and during the years after its launch the company developed variations on the theme that could be appreciated by both the sighted, and the sightless alike.

The new Eone Switch, with a replaceable ring on the top of the watch that allows you to change the look of the watch in seconds.

The Switch

Since 2014 Eone has refined the functionality of the original Bradley design with subtle changes like opening the groove on the perimeter for easier visual and tactile access to the hour ball.

Beyond the refinements, Eone has most recently developed its new Switch model that features a removeable/replaceable ring on the top of the watch that allows you to change the look of the watch in seconds. While the rings do need to retain the tactile hour markers for time reference, the potential for changing the look of the watch with a quick twist of your fingers has major appeal.

Eone sells the new Switch with two rings that you can easily interchange (without any tools). You can also buy them separately if you want to add new variations to your collection and transform your one cool watch into many.

Extra rings available for the Eone Switch.

Prices: $360 including two rings. Extra rings are available at $40 per and the entire Eone line ranges from $260 to $360.   Read more about Switch here.

 

 

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The Watches

Conor McGregor Spins for Jacob & Co.

UFC Champ Conor McGregor recently raised the profile of the Jacob & Co. Astronomia Casino by posting a video of the roulette-wheel watch to his much-viewed Instagram account. In just one day, McGregor’s August 29 post on his “thenotoriousmma” Instagram platform received more than 1.2 million likes, and counting.

The Astronomia Casino features a fully operational roulette wheel. In the short video, McGregor is sitting by a pool. He pressed the watch’s pusher to spin the roulette wheel, calling for “Black 11.” The white ceramic ball instead falls on Red 14.

His caption accompanying the video was directed at the rapper Drake, who also owns an Astronomia.

Jacob & Co’s Astronomia Casino is one of the many iterations of the Astronomia timepiece, with a four-arm vertical movement. The watch’s roulette wheel, made in green, red, and black enamel with mahogany inlays, operates on demand and replicates the action of a roulette wheel. The white ceramic ball is separated from the movement by a near invisible sapphire crystal.

Above the roulette wheel Jacob & Co places a double-axis tourbillon, a rotating spherical diamond with the exclusive Jacob Cut, a rotating magnesium and lacquered globe, and a titanium subdial time display. The entire display revolves around the watch every ten minutes. (Source: Jacob & Co.)

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The Watches

Deep Blue Lights Up

By Gary Girdvainis

One of our favorite American-based dive watch specialists has released another water watch you’re sure to appreciate. Deep Blue’s Daynight Alpha Marine 500 Tritium T-100 Swiss Automatic may be a mouthful to pronounce, but you’ll like what you see at a glance.

The Deep Blue Daynight Alpha Marine 500 Tritium T-100 Swiss Automatic.

Deep Blue is known for its intense lume and superior water resistance, and this new model certainly fills the bill. The watch is cased in a 45mm 316L stainless steel case and is 15mm thick. Inside beats a Sellita SW-200-1 Automatic oscillating at 28,800 vph.

Visible through the 33mm dial aperture are the numerous flat and round self-illuminating tritium tubes, in this case complemented by a fully illuminated dial. Clearly its all about the glow on this watch. Even the 120-click ceramic bezel combines Superluminova numerals and markers with a tritium pip.

As expected, Deep Blues utilizes an extra thick sapphire crystal with AR coating underneath, and another crystal offers a view of the movement from the reverse side.

Water resistant to an impressive 500 meters, the watch head is held in place by a stainless steel bracelet with a multi-function safety and micro-adjustment deployant clasp. Price: $999.

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The Watches

Only Watch 2021 Favorites: Zenith

We continue to highlight a few of our favorite watches from among the more than fifty watchmakers that have created timepieces for the Only Watch charity auction, which commences Saturday, November 6, in Geneva. Christie’s will auction these incredible watches to raise funds that benefit research in the battle against Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

While you may have seen a few of the watches set for auction earlier this year when Only Watch announced them, we thought you’d enjoy seeing many of these inspired designed again just ahead of the event.

Click here for details about the Only Watch world tour, which begins September 22.

Today, we highlight the offering from Zenith, which has teamed with artist Felipe Pantone for a spectacular special edition of its Defy 21 Double Tourbillon, which here is cased entirely of transparent sapphire crystal ­– a first for any watch in the Zenith Defy collection.

This watch, based on one of Zenith’s most complicated chronographs, is regulated by two independent tourbillons. They operate at five hertz (for the timekeeping function) and fifty hertz (for the 1/100th of a second chronograph). Pantone has transferred his own style to Zenith’s movement’s decoration and the open dial.

As Zenith explains, it has coated the bridges to reflect a gradient of metallic rainbow tones, marking the first time we’ve seen three-dimensional PVD with silicon particles as a surface treatment on a tourbillon chronograph movement. This produces an-eye-catching spectrum of colors. Zenith then fixes its movement within a case given the same rainbow effect. The caseback sports a similar rainbow PVD coating on the bridges, where “Unique Piece” is engraved on one of them under the blackened star-shaped winding rotor.

Pantone then distorts the central hour and minute hands to resemble lightning bolts. Echoing the movement, Zenith applies a rainbow gradient of colors in PVD to the hands, while each of the applied hour markers is filled with a different color. Zenith and Pantone create a crazy moiré optical effect on the dial, produced by thin alternating white and black using fine laser-engraving and precise lacquering techniques.

Finally, Zenith will package the watch in a special box resembling an art book and add an original signed artwork by Felipe Pantone.

Only Watch auction estimate: CHF 180,000 – 220,000.

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