What’s ticking: All the latest watch news, from Geneva and beyond
Aston Martin and Girard-Perregaux prove it ain’t easy being British-Racing green, Dr Rebecca Struthers makes a similarly convincing ‘case’ for British watchmaking, while George Bamford doubles down in W1K. A round-up of the coolest new watches.
A brief biography of time
Books on clocks and watches are usually authored by men of a certain age who want you to know many facts. Hands of Time: A Watchmaker’s History of Time is not that book.
It’s written by Dr Rebecca Struthers, a watchmaker based in Birmingham’s historic Jewellery Quarter, whose day job is making and restoring mechanical masterpieces alongside her husband Craig Struthers.
Dr Struthers is the first person to be awarded a doctorate in horology, which combines with her youthful, cosmopolitan cool to serve up a gripping history of timekeeping that necessarily starts with the personal, but then embarks the reader on a journey through time, examining how timepieces have shaped humanity not just in our daily lives but philosophically too.
Starting in the darkness of prehistory with 40,000-year-old bone etchings, it spans millennia to reach our 21st century atomic clocks.
Struthers examines how everything from our working hours to our leisure time has been influenced by developments in timekeeping.
“I spend whole days working on mechanisms which can contain hundreds of tiny components,” she says. “Each of them has a specific task to perform. Every morning when I sit at my bench, it is an adventure into a new timepiece with its own history to lose myself in.
And in their history, we can find the history of time itself.”
- Hodder & Stoughton, £22.00
Lights, ceramica, action!
Girard-Perregaux’s latest piece of high-octane wristwear calls on appropriately brilliant engineering in rendering its octagonal ‘Laureato’ sports watch in lightweight ceramic.
It was unveiled at the spiritual home of Aston Martin (Girard-Perregau being the British marque’s Swiss watch partner) in Newport Pagnell, where the original factory is now in the business of turning barn-find DB5s into auction-house stars for a flat fee of £400,000.
Available in either 388 examples of 42mm or 188 38mm sizes (both brands being far too classy to pigeonhole according to gender), Aston’s British racing green is matched perfectly across the board, despite the fickle uncertainties of sintering zirconium oxide at 1,200ºC, with all the 30 per cent shrinkage and brittle hand-finishing that comes downstream.
Four limited editions in, it seems that G-P and AM’s own match is one that’ll stick. In the wise words of Marek Reichman, chief creative officer at Aston: “Patrick [Pruniaux, CEO at G-P] and I spent a lot of time talking about the folklore of the Laureato and the design play between shape and proportion of its iconic bezel.
“When he shared G-P’s exploration into the optical properties of technical ceramics, microbeads and microns, I became enchanted by this idea of the past becoming the future.”
- From £21,200, girard-perregaux.com
Introducing the Bamford B80
Bamford London kickstarts 2023 with a watch, the B80, that embodies the unique brand of hyper-opportunistic, personalised luxury that it has pioneered for two decades.
A celebration of founder and JCB scion,George Bamford’s commitment to fluid, contemporary and coherent design language, B80 takes its name from the home of its conception: 80 South Audley Street.
An elegant Mayfair townhouse that George likes to call ‘The Hive’ after his and his wife’s ‘Mr and Mrs B’ moniker among loved ones – committing right down to its honey bee door knocker and vestibule wallpaper.
For the B80, its sleek titanium case contains Swiss-made Sellita mechanics, and a choice of three moods: ‘Heritage’ in black or blue, ‘Modern’, emphasising Bamford’s position to bring flexibility and customisation to the watch world (not to mention the patronage thereof from TAG Heuer and Zenith), with a further two colourways in yellow delivering a summery neon, or signature ‘Bamford’ blue.
Then there’s the B80 ‘Adventure’ with a swatch of hazy green, ochre, or walnut. Three tones speaking irresistibly and warmly of member’s club rooms or vintage Bentley interiors, with a particularly fair price-tag that’s far south of either.
- The Bamford B80 watch is available at an astonishingly affordable £1,250 from bamfordlondon.com