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- JLC Releases Two New Master Ultra Thins With Pink Gold and Blue Dials, Hublot's Interesting Dragon Watch, Christopher Ward Releases British Themed Bel Canto, New From Delma And Blancpain
JLC Releases Two New Master Ultra Thins With Pink Gold and Blue Dials, Hublot's Interesting Dragon Watch, Christopher Ward Releases British Themed Bel Canto, New From Delma And Blancpain
You can't stay that mad at Jaeger-LeCoultre when they make watches like this
It's About Time
January 16, 2024
Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. A week ago I was excited about all the dragon-themed watches, wanting to see what every brand will bring to the table. Not even two weeks into writing about them, I’m a bit tired. However, I do have something to admit. I don’t hate the dragon Hublot. There.
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In this issue:
Jaeger-LeCoultre Upgrades Master Ultra Thin Tourbillon Enamel and Power Reserve in Pink Gold and Blue
Hublot Works With Chinese Artist Chen Fenwan For A Lunar New Year Limited-Edition
Delma Surprises With First Proprietary Movement (And With A Tourbillon) For 100th Anniversary
Christopher Ward Announces Limited Edition Bel Canto 9324 For British Watchmakers’ Day
Blancpain’s Year Of The Dragon Watch Is The Subtlest Of Them All With A Beautiful Green Enamel Dial
Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
👂What’s new
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Of all the watch brands that increased their prices in the Great Covid Price Hike, none reached as far as Jaeger-LeCoultre. While the overall Swiss industry saw a price increase of a bit under 50% in the period between 2019 to 2022, JLC increased the price of their Reverso Classic Duoface by 44% in less than a year. This pricing decision drew a lot of ire from the public, but you can’t really stay mad at Jaeger-LeCoultre for long because they just make such nice watches. Like the most recent update to the Master Ultra Thin, the pink gold and blue Master Ultra Thin Tourbillon Enamel and the Master Ultra Thin Power Reserve.
The blue and pink gold colorway is not new to the Master Ultra Thin, as they did the same late last year with the Master Ultra Thin Moon and it was a very nice watch. First up is the Master Ultra Thin Tourbillon which comes in a case that measures 40mm wide, 12.13mm thick and is made out of pink gold.
The pink gold of the case matches the blue enamel dial with its sunray burst guilloché pattern. There are actually two guilloché patterns on the watch - one is the sunray burst on the main dail and there’s a secondary circular guilloché on the date subdial at 12 o’clock. The guilloché is covered by a rich blue layer of Grand Feu enamel. At 6 o’clock you’ll find the tourbillon, which is part of the Calibre 978, C’s go to tourbillon movement, an automatic affair with a 45-hour power reserve.
Then there’s the Master Ultra Thin Power Reserve, a much more subdued watch than the Tourbillon. It comes, once again, in the pink gold case which measures 39mm wide and 8.95mm thick. While it lacks a guilloché or enamel dial, it does have the same blue as the Tourbillon, on rendered in a sunray brush with a subtle dark blue gradient from lighter in the centre to darker on the outside. It has applied pink gold markers, central hours and minutes, subdials for both seonds and the date, and a power reserve indicator at 10 o’clock. Inside is the Calibre 938 which has been updated to have 70 hours of power reserve.
Both the Master Ultra Thin Tourbillon Enamel and the Master Ultra Thin Power Reserve are available now, but the Master Ultra Thin Tourbillon Enamel might be a bit harder to source, as it’s pricing is only by inquiry (expected to be somewhere in the €120,000 range). The Master Ultra Thin Power Reserve is more readily available and is priced at €21,000. See more on the Jaeger-LeCoultre website.
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I promise this is the last time I say that February 10 is the beginning of the Lunar Year of the dragon and I’ll stop reminding you that brands are cranking out dragon-themed in the coming month. Yesterday we had two dragon watches - the Bell & Ross and the Ulysse Nardin. Today, we have two more. First up is a limited edition of the Spirit of Big Bang Titanium called the Dragon, for obvious reasons.
Starting with the case, the one thing that’s the same with the rest of the Spirit of Big Bang, it’s made out of titanium, tonneau-shaped and measures 42mm wide and 13.8mm thick. You still get the 6 H-shaped screws on the bezel, rubber bumpers and the brushed, polished and sandblasted finishing.
Thing’s get much different on the dial. Hublot partnered with Chinese artist Chen Fenwan who drew inspiration from the Chinese art form of paper cutting. She created a multi layer sandwich dial featuring a dragon rendered in pink, blue and grey. Interestingly, dragons in Chinese culture take on a much different shape than those in the west and accordign to tradition they have features of nine different animals: the eyes of a prawn, the horns of a deer, the mouth of a bull, the nose of a dog, the whiskers of a catfish, the mane of a lion, the tail of a snake, the tail of a fish and the claws of an eagle.
The strap is equally as interesting as the dial, as the tail of the dragon extends onto it. Each of the dragon’s scales is coloured by hand and then nano-vulcanised onto the strap. But if that’s too much for you (I don’t see how it would be, if you’re wearing this watch it should be as eye catching as possible), Hublot will give you a second grey Velcro strap.
Inside is the HUB1710, an automatic movement based on the Zenith Elite calibre 670. It beats at 28,800vph and offers a 50-hour power reserve.
The Hublot Spirit of Big Bang Titanium Dragon is limited to 88 pieces and sells for €30,800. Say what you will, and you will because it’s easy to poke fun at Hublot, but I like this watch. See more on the Hublot website.
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While not a household name to the general public, Delma has a cult following among enthusiasts of rugged and capable tool watches. They are chunky, they can go to incredible depths and are often built with very specifict tasks in mind, like the Delma Quattro Decompression Diver which you can easily pop out of it’s housing and attach to a decompression plate. What they don’t make and have never made, are (almost) dress watches with incredible movements. Well, Delma is now celebrating their 100th anniversary with the 1924 Tourbillon wristwatch, one that features their first in-house movement and a complication that is a far cry from decompression divers.
This is a brand new watch, not just the movement, but also the case. It’s made out of stainless steel and measures 41mm wide and a hefty 14mm thick, with a tonneau shape, made even more pronounced by the very large crown protectors that surround the oversize crown with hobnail grip. There’s a circular polished bezel on top, while the case has a combination of polished and brushed finishing.
The dial is much more simpler than the case. It has a grained black finish with applied hour markers and matching palladium hour and minute hands with white Super-LumiNova. At 6 o’clock is the opening for the 60-second tourbillon. Since it rotates once every minute it also functions as the seconds indicator with a blue hand mounted on top.
And that tourbillon is part of the most impressive part of the watch, the Calibre DT100.01, Delma’s first ever proprietary movement. Manually wound, it has a power reserve of 105 hours. It has a variable inertia balance with a shock absorption system that protects it up to 5,000G as well as featuring an alloy hairspring and Glucydur balance wheel for magnetic field resistance up to 2,000 gauss. It’s not bad looking either, with perlage and a Côtes de Genève striped pattern. The watch comes on a stainless steel bracelet with deployant clasp with an additional black Italian calf leather strap with buckle.
The Delma 1924 Tourbillon is limited to just 100 pieces to mark the 100th anniversary. It’s available for preorder and will be on preorder until March 16th. While on preorder, the price is set at CHF 8,900. Once the preorder window closes, you can get the watch in Delma boutiques for CHF 12,500. This is an absolutely puzzling watch. On one hand, Delma went through the incredible task of creating a new case and proprietary movement for just 100 pieces. On the other, it’s a weird looking watch - neither dressy nor sporty, it straddles a grey zone that’s hard to define. See more on the Delma website.
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It looks like the British Watchmakers’ Day, organized by the Alliance of British Watch and Clock Makers’, might be quite a show. While there aren’t that many British watch brands out there, they are ramping up production on limited editions to mark their first Day. Just a few days ago we had the ten unique Duckworth Prestex models. Now, Christopher Ward is releasing a special edition of their most special watch, the Bel Canto 9324 British Watchmakers’ Day.
First the major thing that remains the same - it’s the case of the watch. It’s made out of titanium, measures 41mm wide and 13mm thick. It’s fully round with very short lugs and it’s almost all dial. And no wonder, considering that it has to use that dial space to show the time and the engagement of the chiming mechanism.
However, in order to pay homage to British watchmaking, CW has completely changed the aesthetic of the dial. It get’s a guilloché base that mimics the Union Jack with a dark blue base, while the areas of the flag that are typically red are presented with a polished finish while the white sections are done in Clous de Paris. Another change are the Roman numerals on the small subdial that is used to show the time, making it a much more classic looking watch.
The Bel Canto 9324 British Watchmakers’ Day is limited to just 10 pieces and priced at £4,995. The only way you will be able to buy one is by attending the Alliance of British Watch and Clock Makers’ event on March 9th at Lindley Hall in London and even then, you’ll have to enter a raffle for a chance to purchase. All profits from the watch will go to the Alliance. While the watch is still not online, keep an eye out on the CW website or that of the Alliance to see what pops up.
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One after the other, the watches that pay homage to the Year of the Dragon have tried one-upping each other with the more extravagant and more intricate rendition of a dragon on the dial or the case of the watch. Just look at the Hublot above for a good example. Blancpain, on the other hand, is taking a different approach. While the Villeret Traditional Chinese Calendar is an unbelievably complicated watch, it does not show in a flashy way.
This watch actually has an interesting story behind it. The Villeret Traditional Chinese Calendar was first introduced in 2012, to mark the previous Year of the Dragon. 12 years later, it’s the dragon’s turn again, and Blancpain is releasing the same watch, but in an incredible polished red gold case with a rich green enamel dial. The case measures a significant 45.2mm wide and 15.1mm thick, but it needs all that size. Not just to house the dial with all the complications, but also to hide the five patented correctors to adjust the calendar under the lugs.
The Traditional Chinese Calendar not only has the really complicated Chinese calendar in it, but also the Gregorian calendar. While a bit gratuitous, it does serve a purpose as China regularly uses both the lunar calendar for festival dates and the Gregorian for civil purposes. The challenge posed by a Chinese calendar resides in the difference between the number of days in a solar year (365.2) and the lunar year, which can vary between 353, 354 or 355 days.
The dial gets a beautiful rich green, almost jade, shade of Grand Feu enamel which is equally as well laid out as it is full of information. The date is placed on the periphery and indicated by a serpentine gold hand. Indicated by openworked sage hands, the hours are represented by applied red gold Roman numerals and dots at 12, 3 and 9 o’clock. At 6 o’clock, there is a moon phase aperture with a smiling golden moon face and stars. The three sub-dials with silver enamel inscriptions in Mandarin relay the Chinese calendar information.
Another novelty is the refreshed portrait of the golden dragon (and the eleven other zodiac animals) in the aperture at noon. Beneath the dragon is a small sub-dial with double hours in figures and symbols. The sub-dial at 9 o’clock is dedicated to the lunar months and days, and the small circular aperture turns red when the year has a 13th intercalary month. At 3 o’clock, the third sub-dial with a yin and yang symbol in its centre indicates the five elements – wood, earth, fire, water and metal – and the ten heavenly stems.
All of this is powered by the obviously incredible calibre 3638 which beats at 4Hz and has a 7 day power reserve, thanks to three series-coupled barrels. Traditional finishings decorate the movement, and the red gold rotor features a beautifully engraved figure of the Wood Dragon flanked by a red ruby.
The Blancpain Villeret Traditional Chinese Calendar is limited to 50 pieces and while no price has been given, it should be north of €70,000. See more on the Blancpain website.
🫳On hand
Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon
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⚙️Watch Worthy
A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually likewatches
If I were an architect, I would start to wax lyrical about the different elevations of the dial. Available in red, blue, green, grey, or brown, the central, radially finished section steps up to a metallic ring that houses the claw-like hour markers, culminating in an accurate but not too serious-feeling outer minute ring in matching colours. Just call me Frank Lloyd Wright.
As you start to look deeper, you notice how the day and date displays are sunken-in to not disturb the eye, revealing themselves only when needed. Once a day, if your memory is good enough. Overall, the dial is incredibly detailed. The razor-sharp dauphine hands and applied logo add to the crispness of the design. One thing to note is that the date window is coloured to match the inner dial, but the day display matches the metallic ring.
⏲️Wait a minute
A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting
Virginia Kraft was a trailblazing hunting and adventure writer during the earliest days of Sports Illustrated. Over a sparkling 26 year career with more than 100 SI bylines, she was “one of the only women writing the kinds of in-depth stories the magazine became known for,” writes Emily Sohn. “She wrote about nature with the lyricism of a poet.” So why hasn’t anyone heard of her?
From 2001 to 2019, Tom Brady and coach Bill Belichick turned the New England Patriots into an NFL powerhouse. A dominant team that set records and did things nobody thought possible, whether you like them or not. So it’s kind of sad to see that Belichick was canned after two-three bad seasons. This piece from ESPN is an incredible, decades-spanning tick-tock of that band’s dissolution days after Belichick’s supposedly “amicable” departure. The story, full of behind-the-scenes F-yous and slights shared with confidants, offers a more accurate picture—one that, somehow, finds a good bit of pathos for the architects of the NFL’s greatest dynasty and longtime villains.
At Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, Ed Martin III had become accustomed to unusual requests. Then came Patricia Chaarte. Who was the mysterious woman buried alone at the pet cemetery?
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
The fact that you are reading this email likely means you like collecting watches. And if you collect watches, I’m willing to bet you collect other things. Some of it is worth something. Some of it is junk. Because we all collect junk, whether we like it or not. Van Neistat has a really simple way of getting rid of things you don’t need. If you can bring yourself to throw anything away.
💵Pre-loved precision
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