The newly revived Swiss watch brand Edouard Koehn is now being distributed in North America by the New Jersey-based Totally Worth It, which also distributes Ressence, Trilobe, Scatola del Tempo and Swiss Kubik.
The Edouard Koehn Tempus I, skeleton model in a 43mm steel case with black PVD coating and black ceramic bezel.
Named for master watchmaker Edouard Koehn, who in 1891 developed his eponymous watch brand in Geneva after decades at Patek Philippe, the new Edouard Koehn Master Watchmaker Manufacture is based in La Chaux-de-Fonds and offers three watch collections: Tempus I, Tempus II and World Heritage.
A Tempus I model, with blue Clous de Paris dial.
The Chronographs
The two Tempus collections feature contemporary automatic chronographs with movements developed by Edouard Koehn in collaboration with famed Swiss movement maker Concepto. Tempus I is a sporty tri-compax chronograph in a PVD blackened steel case with a black ceramic bezel, offered in four dial colors and two skeleton versions.
One example of the Edouard Koehn Tempus II Monopusher self-winding mechanical Chronograph.
Tempus II is a Bi-Compax mono-pusher chronograph, and is much more ambitious, with a technical design that exposes an inverted escapement at the top of each dial.
This“Open Heart” design, also framed by a black ceramic bezel, displays chronograph time via a central seconds hand and a large thirty-minutes chronograph subdial at the 3 o’clock position. Four dial colors are available.
Back view of Tempus II, showing back of the automatic monopusher chronograph caliber.
Prices: $7,950 (Tempus I) and $9,950 (Tempus II)
The Edouard Koehn World Heritage combines a world time function with an alarm function.
World Heritage
As the most traditional series in the Edouard Koehn collection, the World Heritage model is nonetheless technically challenging. The watch, built using a Concepto base caliber modified for Edouard Koehn, includes an alarm function, combining two complications highly useful to travelers.
While the world time function allows the wearer to see the world time in any of twenty-four time zones, the alarm function allows the wearer to set an alert that, for instance, might note an upcoming flight time. The double barrel EK-MVTWTA01 caliber simultaneously winds the watch and the alarm functions.
Edouard Koehn offers these World Heritage models as limited editions, with each of five dial options available in editions of eighty-eight pieces.
At 42mm in diameter, these World Heritage models are somewhat smaller than the chronographs. They are lighter too, cased in titanium rather than steel. All told, this makes for a lightweight watch with heavyweight technical functions.
While Barry Cohen may not be a household name for most watch consumers, I can almost guarantee you know his work.
As the founder of Luminox back in 1989, Cohen established a brand that deftly integrated the ethos of the brand directly into the name: “Lumi” stood for illumination and “Nox” for night so the brand name meant it had superior night lume thanks to its self-illuminating tritium gas tubes.
Cohen sold the brand he founded for a variety of reasons. He returned with a new brand that would take the next logical steps in the design of a rugged sports watch that would not only look great – but would also make a strong value argument.
A model in the ProTek Dive Series. All sport a 42mm carbon composite case.
Enter ProTek
Priced aggressively from $450 to $525, ProTek watches are available in stainless steel, carbon composite, and surgical grade titanium cases, and all of them feature self-illuminating tritium tubes.
A new ProTek Official USMC Series model, with a 42mm carbon composite case.
ProTek offers several dive watch variations that sport carbon composite or steel cases.
The Field Watch
Featured here, the 3000 Series Field watch is crafted in a slim (11mm), lightweight titanium case weighing only 48 grams in either a natural or black IP version.
One model in the ProTek 3000 Series of field watches. Each features a 40mm titanium case.
All are capped with a flat sapphire crystal over a dial and hands enhanced with 3 colors of T-100 self-illuminating tubes.
These are the brightest self-illuminating tubes available and will emit their own radiance for up to twenty-five years without the need for exposure to external light to perform.
Rated and tested to a legitimate 100 meters of water resistance, the ProTek Series 3000 field watch can also be a casual-use water watch and is delivered with a waterproof Italian leather strap.
Clean dials in black, admiral blue, olive green and a silvery off-white are all easy to read. With a light weight of just over 48 grams (head-only), the watches are very comfortable on the wrist for extended use.
The threaded (screw-down) back is also crafted in titanium with a stylized “P” presented in deep relief, as it is on the double-gasket crown.
Inside the case is a Citizen/Miyota quartz movement with a four-year battery accurate to +/- 20 seconds per month. Retail price is $475 at www.watchgauge.com.
This weekend, Ulysse Nardin unveiled its latest dive watch, the Ocean Race Diver Chronograph, as the watchmaker joined the six-month-long Ocean Race during a stopover in Newport, Rhode Island.
The new Ulysse Nardin Ocean Race Diver Chronograph.
Ulysse Nardin launched the limited-edition watch in collaboration with The Ocean Race in part to celebrate the historic race’s fiftieth anniversary. In addition, the watch pays tribute to both partners’ commitment to protecting the oceans.
The Ocean Race, which was first launched in 1973 from Portsmouth, England, was originally known as the Whitbread Round the World Race, then The Volvo Ocean Race. The global competition is now known as The Ocean Race.
Water-resistant to 300 meters, the Ocean Race Diver Chronograph’s 44mm sandblasted black DLC titanium case houses the superb in-house chronograph caliber UN-150, which is visible through the sapphire crystal case back and bears the number ‘50’ in tribute to this race’s anniversary.
Ulysse Nardin has also placed the Ocean Race logo to the ceramic component on the rubber strap’s pin buckle. (See additional technical specifications below).
Recycled finish
Referencing Ulysse Nardin’s eco-friendly aims, the watchmaker created the watch’s unidirectional bezel with a Carbonium finish, which contains fibers recycled from airplane fuselage offcuts.
As the Official Timekeeper of the race, Ulysse Nardin is responsible for the official timings of the various legs and the start countdowns, but it is also a partner of the 24-Hour Speed Challenge, in which the crew that covers the greatest distance in 24 hours wins.
In addition to this role as Official Timer, Ulysse Nardin is also a partner of Time to Act, a program that aims to reduce the devastating impact of pollution, climate change, and industrial overfishing on our oceans.
As part of this program, and alongside the Racing with Purpose and 11th Hour Racing organizations, The Ocean Race is undertaking a sustainability program. During the race, the teams will gather data on the impact of climate change and plastic pollution. Ulysse Nardin notes that the initiative will result in “the most data ever collected as part of a sporting event.”
The Ocean Race crews sail from Newport on May 21, continuing to Aarhus (Denmark), the Kiel Fly-By (Germany) and The Hague (Netherlands) before the grand finale, which is set to take place in Genoa (Italy) at the end of June.
Ulysse Nardin will offer the Ocean Race Diver Chronograph as a limited edition of 100 timepieces. Price: $15,700.
Movement: Calibre UN-150 self-winding Manufacture Chronograph, silicon escape wheel, anchor and balance-spring. Frequency: 4 Hz / oscillating at 28,800 vph.
Dial: Sandblasted black, 30-minutes counter at 3 o’clock, 12-hours counter and date at 6 o’clock, small seconds at 9 o’clock. Rhodium-plated indexes and hands with Super-LumiNova.
Case: 44mm sandblasted and satin-finished black DLC titanium, Carbonium concave unidirectional rotating bezel with domed sapphire crystal, black DLC titanium open sapphire case back, ‘50’ logo in tribute to the 50th anniversary of The Ocean Race, 300 meters of water resistance.
Strap: Black rubber strap with black ceramic element at 6 o’clock, engraved with The Ocean Race logo, black ceramic pin buckle.
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.
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.
Rated and tested to a legitimate 100 meters of water resistance, the ProTek Series 3000 field watch can also be a casual-use water watch and is delivered with a waterproof Italian leather strap.
The threaded (screw-down) back is also crafted in titanium with a stylized “P” presented in deep relief, as it is on the double-gasket crown.
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.