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From March 15th, 2012
The Renaissance Tourbillon Minute Repeater by Peter Speake-Marin
For most of the past decade the watch industry has been entranced by the tourbillon’s hypnotic revolutions, with brands spinning out the cagey little complication in ever greater numbers and more ingenious ways.
But recently watchmakers have broken free of the spell, shifting their attention from the visual fascination of the tourbillon to the tuneful appeal of the minute repeater.
Minute repeater clocks and pocket watches were invented in the mid-18th century, before the advent of electric lighting. Their practical function at that time was their ability, though chiming gongs, to sound the hours, quarter hours and minutes in separate tones, enabling people to tell the time even in the middle of a pitch black night.
The Reverso Répétition Minutes à Rideau by Jaeger-LeCoultre
Over the past year, close to two dozen new minute repeater models have been introduced in the luxury wristwatch market, by brands as diverse in style and heritage as Bulgari, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Louis Vuitton, Audemars Piguet, Speake-Marin, Van Cleef & Arpels, Breguet, Patek Philippe, Cartier, Hublot, Ulysse Nardin, Girard-Perregaux and Parmigiani Fleurier.
The number of new minute repeaters on the market is staggering, considering that there is no real need for them in the modern world. But that irrelevance — the sense of belonging to another world — is part of their appeal.
“There is a true fascination in being able to hear the time, it harks back to another lifetime,” Peter Speake-Marin, an independent watchmaker, said by e-mail ahead of the introduction of his first venture into the genre, the Renaissance Tourbillon Minute Repeater, at Baselworld this week. “When it is visible, to see the levers, cams and springs moving, it is a thing of curious beauty,” he added.
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Who is the go-to person for an avid watch fan seeking to track down a rare addition to his or her collection, or possibly a uniquely customized timepiece?
Ennio Barozzi with a more antiquated form of timepiece. His store in Brescia, Italy, specializes in luxury and hard-to-find watches.
One answer: Ennio Barozzi, watch fixer and detective.
From his home base in Brescia, in northern Italy, a watch store that has been in the family since 1959, Mr. Barozzi tracks down vintage watches and hard-to-find timepieces. He does it with the nonchalance of someone who has spent his life honing the skill of finding the right watch for the specific style of each of his clients.
But there is steel beneath the charm. Like the classic private eyes of American fiction, he comes armed and knows how to shoot. The proof: “I used one of my Beretta guns,” he said in an e-mail, “to scare off the burglars” who tried to rob his store in 1999. Boutique Barozzi carries nearly 30 top watch brands — an eclectic stock ranging from classics like A. Lange & Sohne and IWC, to cutting edge innovators like De Bethune and Greubel Forsey.
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The Omega De Ville pioneered co-axial technology, reviving the brand's fortunes in 1999 after its excursion into quartz.
The rebirth of Omega could be used as a case study in how to bring a once illustrious brand back from the brink.
Until the end of the 1960s, Omega was a top watch name. It had everything going for it: the bragging rights of a brand that had been in business since 1848, the cool factor of being the first watch on the moon and the prestige of the first official timekeeper for the Olympic Games.
Then, in the 1970s, the industry trembled with the seismic shift that was the Japanese quartz watch phenomenon. It was the end of an era and, many believed, the end of the world for mechanical movements. Quartz-regulated, battery powered watches, with their accuracy and “no need to wind” practicality appeared to make mechanical watches obsolete.
Omega embraced the new technology with open arms, bringing out its first range of electronic quartz watches in 1970.
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