The annual California Mille classic car rally ran in late April with Chopard again (for the fifth time) as the rally’s Official Timer. In addition to its timing duties, the Swiss watchmaker has launched a commemorative watch to mark the 2023 event: The Mille Miglia GTS Automatic Chrono California Mille 32nd Edition, a 44mm Lucent Steel certified chronometer dressed in grey with Hagerty Motorsports black and blue racing stripes.
The Chopard Mille Miglia GTS Automatic Chrono California Mille 32nd Edition.
As is typical of Chopard’s always notable racing-themed chronographs, the dial on this latest example is meant to recall the dashboard of a classic car. Thus, you’ll see the bright red accents on the California Mille logo and the tip of central sweep-seconds hand contrasting nicely with the grey dial and the racing stripes.
Additional racing themed designs are seen around the dial, with the watch’s thin black bezel displaying a tachymeter scale with contrasting white graduations that can be used to measure average speed ranging from 60 to 400 km/h by means of the chronograph seconds hand.
Inside, Chopard provides an COSC-certified ETA Valjoux-based automatic caliber with a 48-hour power reserve. Sturdy mushroom-type pushers are knurled on top to assist with a grip while in use. Likewise, Chopard adds a large crown with a ratcheted edge to ensure a good grip.
Finally, the Mille Miglia GTS Automatic Chrono California Mille 32nd Edition timepiece is fitted with a black calfskin strap lined with rubber. In keeping with the codes established at the birth of the Mille Miglia collection, the lining is patterned like the tread of 1960s Dunlop Racing tires.
Chopard offers its Mille Miglia GTS Automatic Chrono California Mille 32nd Edition as a limited edition of thirty pieces.
Blancpain adds small seconds and moon phase functions to its Ladybird collection of jeweled watches. Dubbed Ladybird Colors, the collection offers new hues as well, with models sporting summer-ready midnight blue, peacock green, forest green, lilac or turquoise numerals on textured mother-of-pearl dials.
One of two new models in the new Blancpain Ladybird Colors collection. A second model features a small seconds display.
In addition to their new, colorful dials, each Ladybird Colors watch is set with seventy diamonds on the bezel and lugs.
Offered in either red gold or white gold 34.9mm cases, each watch in the series offers leather straps colored to match the new dial accents.
Note that the numerals on the Ladybird Colors dials are asymmetrical, a style also seen on the tapering diamond-setting around the small seconds and moon-phase indicators.
As these are Blancpain watches, all are powered by a mechanical movement, namely automatic Calibre 1163 for the small seconds version and automatic Calibre 1163L for the moon-phase model.
The caseback of the green Ladybird Colors Small Seconds in a red gold case, showing automatic Caliber 1163, with its open-work rotor.
Each movement offers a four-day power reserve and a silicon balance spring.
Blancpain nicely finishes the movement, including an open-work gold oscillating weight in the gold color that matches case metal.
Prices: $34,100 (moon phase) and $32,000 (small seconds).
Hublot teams with Nespresso to create a green-hued, environmentally friendly Big Bang watch made using recycled Nespresso capsules and coffee grounds.
The new Hublot Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin.
The new Hublot Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin is a 42mm limited edition watch with a case, crown, bezel, and pushers made from recycled aluminum. The watch’s caseback and movement container are both made from recycled titanium.
The watch unites two Swiss consumer brands in the latest project in Nespresso’s Second Life campaign, in which the company teams with Swiss brands to create new products from used aluminum coffee capsules.
In addition to using recycled metals, the project also includes a wholly new application for used coffee grounds. In a world first, Hublot and Nespresso have transformed used coffee grounds into watch straps.
The Hublot-Nespresso collaboration is signaled by Nespresso’s “N” engraved on the crown.
For the fabric strap, one of the two straps included with the watch, Hublot collaborated with SingTex, aNespresso partner. The fabric strap, called Scafé, is 100% recycled fabric made using 5% coffee grounds and 95% recycled polyester. Hublot colors the fabric strap green to match the case andthen adds a recycled aluminum cap to the strap’s titanium buckle.
The watch, pictured with fabric strap.
Coffee grounds are even added to the rubber strap, which is composed of 4.1% coffee grounds and 8.2% recycled white rubber.
The watch’s particular green color is a nod to the color of the Nespresso Master Origins Peru capsule. Inside, Hublot fits its HUB1280 Unico Manufacture automatic chronograph.
“This is a symbolic watch: in creating the Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin, Hublot and Nespresso have demonstrated that it is possible to add value to recycled raw materials – and that circularity has no limits,” Hublot explains in its promotional material for the new watch.
Hublot places the new Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin (a 200-piece limited edition) in an eco-friendly, reusable oak box specially decorated with the two brands’ logos, affixed using coffee grounds.
Louis Vuitton introduces its first time-only skeleton movement, LV60, and places it into its proprietary, modified cushion-shaped Voyager case to create the Voyager Skeleton, a limited edition, platinum-cased work of eye-catching horological architecture.
The new Louis Vuitton Voyager Skeleton.
No stranger to open-worked movements (see, for example, its Tambour Curve Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève or the Voyager Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève), Louis Vuitton uses this new model to explore a horologically less complex Voyager.
This approach allows the watchmakers atLa Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton (in collaboration with Neuchâtel-based workshop Le Cercle des Horlogers) to focus on the Voyager’s architectural case and dynamic bridgework.
In fact, Louis Vuitton explains that its designers were inspired by the architecture of the Frank Gehry-designed Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris when creating the skeletal Voyager.
Like the Foundation building, the Voyager’s movement offers a minimalist approach to its structure. The Voyager’s watchmakers have carefully trimmed excess bridges and plates, constructing only the minimum required for the movement’s internal integrity.
Fortunately, this approach was taken with a keen sense of design, so that, for example, the watch’s LV-shaped bridges are actually geometric lines. Even the rotor is designed with flair — its bridge features a Louis Vuitton monogram while the barrel ratchet wheel is open-worked to spell the brand name itself.
The watch’s almost monochrome hue is created by the rhodium-plated components, which Louis Vuitton frames with a blue minutes ring. Matching blue hands add legibility. An off-center micro-rotor, which winds the mainspring bidirectionally, offers a clear view of the movement from either side of the watch.
In another ode to transparency, Louis Vuitton has opened the mainspring barrel so that it can serve as a power reserve indicator. A tightly-coiled mainspring indicates full wind while loosely-arranged coils remind the wearer to wind the watch.
Case: 41mm by 43.7mm by 9mm platinum case with satin-finished sides and a polished top, sapphire glass, blue snailed minute ring. 50-meters of water resistance, ‘Limited edition’ engraved case-back, with sapphire glass.
Movement: Self-winding mechanical skeleton manufacture movement, Caliber LV60, designed & developed by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. Tungsten micro-rotor decorated with a white gold, rhodium-plated plate. Frequency 28,800 vph with 48-hour power reserve.
Bracelet: Two straps: navy blue, alligator leather strap and calf leather strap with platinum buckle.
William Henry’s new Legacy timepiece collection, its first foray into wristwatches, features dials created from meteorite, fossilized mammoth tooth and other exotic materials.
Matt (William) Conable and his business partner Michael (Henry) Honack founded William Henry in 1997 with the belief that there was a potential consumer base for fine knives situated between the work of individual bladesmiths and mass production. They were right.
First, the Knives
Having practiced his knife-making art under his own name for almost a decade prior to launching the Oregon-based William Henry,Matt Conable developed an appreciation of exotic and unusual materials for his craft.
Today, William Henry incorporates exotic woods, fossilized dinosaur bone, mammoth tooth, semi-precious stones, corals and other unusual materials into handles. Frames, blades, bolsters and other metal elements are crafted in a variety of functional, semi-precious, and elegantly forged metals.
Unlike the results of mass production, William Henry’s knives combine the talents of expert individuals around the world to bring each designto life. Bladesmiths work Damascus and other exotic steels, metalsmiths create Mokume Gane while a host of specialist engravers work their craft to embellish handles and bolsters in their individual style.
I’ll admit that I often lament the overuse of “unique” when describing unusual designs, but each William Henry knife is in-fact unique. No two are exactly the same. The Damascus pattern, the grain of exotic woods, the striations of color in a fossilized mammoth tooth, or even the Widmanstatten patterns of meteorite all lend themselves to this distinctive individuality.
Next, the Accessories
Following the success of their blade-bearing beauties, Conable and company expanded the stable of offerings from knives to a host of other high-end men’s (and a few women’s) accessories including bracelets, necklaces, cufflinks, money clips, writinginstruments, and more.
In each product line, the ethos and feel of the William Henry design was clearly evident.
Seeing this evolution into new product lines I had always wondered – and had actually asked the leadership at William Henry “why not watches?” Vague answers intimated they were clearly considering the idea, but I never got a confirmation – until now.
Three William Henry Legacy watches. From left, Mammoth, Meteorite and Dinosaur.
Finally, the Watches
In reality, the connection between knives and watches is notthat great a leap. Both have ostensible functionality that justifies their existence, and both can be elevated beyond functionality and become works of art crafted in metal and other exotic materials.
For William Henry’s new Legacy timepiece collection, its first foray into wristwatches, five variations (see below) perfectly exemplify the spirit of William Henry.
The William Henry Legacy Dinosaur, with a fossilized Dinosaur bone dial.
From the brand: “William Henry is a studio that tells stories through timeless pieces, and our first watch designis a testament to that intention. The Legacy watch collection is a perfect blend of form and function, built around the extraordinary materials that have defined us.”
A sampling of raw materials used by William Henry to make Legacy collection dials.
Entering the luxury watch market can be a risky thing. Unlike jewelry – or even knives – mechanical watches house a complex engine perfected and refined over hundreds of years by trial and error.
Inside Legacy
For their own launch watches, William Henry chose to go with the Sellita SW 400, a Swiss automatic time & date (only) movement without extraneous functions or complications, allowing the full impact of the rare materials to take center-stage. All else being equal, the SW 400 is a slightly larger version of the SW 200 and fits very nicely into the 42mm case without looking lost in the see-through back.
Each watch is powered by a Sellita automatic movement.
These high-grade movements are housed in grade 5 titanium, Damascus steel, and even Moku-Ti (Damascus titanium) – clearly putting the metallurgical roots and experience of the William Henry brand on full display. These watches are also built to high standards and are water resistant to 100 meters, regardless of the case material.
Under the sapphire crystals, each dial represents more than just color, pattern, and texture. They actually embody time in several different ways:
The William Henry Legacy Superconductor.
The Superconductor dial is a wafer of a modern material originally created as a particle accelerator moving protons and electrons to 99.997% the speed of light. It just so happens that the cross-section of this space-age material presents an intriguing pattern born from technology, and never used for its aesthetic value – until now.
The Legacy Moku-Ti.
The Moku-Ti dial combines ancient metalworking techniques in a mélange of modern materials and historical metalsmithing where the Damascus style layering of metals dating back to 1,500 BC are applied to the more modern titanium, a metal not really in widespread use until the 1900s.
The William Henry Legacy Mammoth.
Traveling a bit further back on the William Henry materials time-line, we find the one model sporting a Mammoth Tooth dial. Crafted from the fossilized teeth of these extinct giants, the amazing dials on these watches show color and grain that belie the source of the material and are at least 10,000 years old – when the last large herds of Wooly Mammoth roamed the planet.
Legacy Dinosaur dials.
The next series jumps back several orders of magnitude to fossilized dinosaur bone dating back 100-200 million years. When initially exhumed from the ground, the fossilized bone looks fairly mundane; much like a rusted rock. When shaped, sanded, polished, and finished, striations of dark grey create patterns over a varicolored Martian-red background in an ethereal expression of natural artistry brought to life through modern craftsmanship.
The Legacy Meteorite.
Traveling even further back to the very beginnings of our universe in our William Henry “Wayback” machine we find the meteorite dials. Not without precedent in the watchmaking pantheon, meteorite dials embody the ancient travelers of the cosmos that have seen billions and billions (thanks Carl) of years go by.
William Henry’s own dials display the iconic Widmanstätten patterns within a contrasting and colorful Moku-Ti case. This creates a vibrant counterpoint to the monochromatic Thomson structures of the dial.
Each William Henry timepiece represents a merger of materials, design, and engineering that integrates a totemic representation of time into timekeeping itself.
This limited-edition Legacy Meteorite model features a dial crafted from pure meteorite, a remarkable interstellar remnant dating back billions of years and discovered here on Earth. The fine crystalline pattern, in metal, is unlike anything else we’ve ever seen, and offers a window back to an earlier era in the story of our universe.
The dial is housed in a forged Moku-Ti case, built with ninety layers of four alloys of aerospace grade titanium. This tapestry in metal is crafted by a master smith in Ukraine specifically for this William Henry watch case, which requires heat to reveal the final pattern.
The watch is finished with a sapphire crystal and exhibition back revealing the Swiss automatic movement with a 38-hour power reserve. Water resistance is rated to 100 meters, and the hand-crafted leather strap features a custom stainless deployant clasp for easy wear and adjustment.
The Fossil Dinosaur Bone Dial
This limited-edition Legacy Dinosaur model features a dial crafted from dinosaur bone; an extraordinary fossil material that ranges from 100 to 200 million years old.
Raw dinosaur bone.
The ‘high red’ dinosaur bone is considered the finest in the world and is found in the American southwest. Initially it has a similar appearance to rock, but after the painstaking process of crafting a precision dial, the beautiful hues and patterns are revealed. Surrounding the ancient dial is a forged Damascus case built with 300 layers of stainless-steel alloys and etched to reveal the individual patterns.
The Wooly Mammoth Tooth Dial
Color and grain are the earmarks of the dial crafted from fossil mammoth tooth. This relic of the giant that last roamed the Earth 10,000 years ago is occasionally discovered on the sea floor or riverbeds. When used for decoration, each tooth or remnant must dry for about 2 years before William Henry can begin to work with it.
Raw mammoth tooth.
Vacuum stabilized with resin, the finished dial reveals unique patterns and colors that have been waiting (at least) 10,000 years to become a timeless story on your wrist. The dial is housed in a forged Damascus case, built with 300 layers of stainless-steel alloys and acid-etched to reveal the flowing patterns of the contrasting metals.
The Legacy Mammoth.
The case on the Legacy Mammoth is finished with a sapphire crystal and exhibition back revealing the Swiss automatic movement with a 38-hour power reserve. Water resistance is rated to 10 ATM/100 meters, and the hand-crafted crocodile leather strap features a custom stainless deployant clasp for easy wear and adjustment.
The Moku-Ti Dial
This Legacy Moku-Ti watch (also limited) features a dial crafted from Moku-Ti, a complex tapestry in titanium. The metal is created by forging eighty-four separate layers of four different alloys of aerospace grade titanium into a finely patterned billet.
The Legacy Moku-Ti features a dial created by forging 84 separate layers of 4 different alloys of aerospace-grade titanium.
This exquisitely detailed material is forged specifically for this project by one master artist located in Ukraine. After a detailed diamond polish, William Henry uses carefully applied heat to reveal the different alloys and final pattern in the dial ensconced within its titanium case.
The Superconductor Dial
This limited-edition Legacy Superconductor model features a dial crafted from Superconductor; a copper-niobium composite originally intended to become wire in a massive particle accelerator. The project was never completed, and this exotic patterned material was never drawn down to its final dimension.
Very little of it exists, and we have enough to make a limited number of watch dials. The dial is housed in a titanium case with black DLC coating, with a sapphire crystal and exhibition back revealing the Swiss automatic movement with a 38-hour power reserve.
This feature appears in the Spring 2023 issue of iW Magazine, where it includes an interview with William Henry co-founder Matt William Conable.
Offered in either red gold or white gold 34.9mm cases, each watch in the series offers leather straps colored to match the new dial accents.
In another ode to transparency, Louis Vuitton has opened the mainspring barrel so that it can serve as a power reserve indicator. A tightly-coiled mainspring indicates full wind while loosely-arranged coils remind the wearer to wind the watch.
Very little of it exists, and we have enough to make a limited number of watch dials. The dial is housed in a titanium case with black DLC coating, with a sapphire crystal and exhibition back revealing the Swiss automatic movement with a 38-hour power reserve.