The Ballon Bleu de Cartier watch, the reason for all the enchanting imagery, isn’t quite what it seems. It looks round, but it isn’t quite. The style is somewhere between classic and futuristic. The glass magnifies the dial numbers and seems to distort time. The Roman Numerals are displaced by the Ballon Bleu itself, the sapphire cabochon decorating the winding mechanism of the precious metal models.

Panerai was started in 1860 by Giovanni Panerai as a watchmaker’s workshop, selling Swiss manufactured timepieces in Florence on the Ponte Alle Grazie. In addition to selling prestigious Swiss timepieces, it also offered repairs and maintenance of watches. As their technical skills grew, tooling precision was enhanced and improved. Soon they started Guido Panerai Optics which eventually supplied equipment for the Ministry of Defense in Italy. These instruments included radiomir ronconi sights, depth gauges, aiming and signaling devices to name a few. After numerous successful tests by the Royal Italian Navy, deliveries started in the 1900’s with the patented “radiomir” tubes containing zincsulphide, radium bromide and mesothorium. The Ronconi sights were distinguished by their high luminescence that enabled weapons to be used even in total darkness. In 1915, the company received the patent for the radiomir – “fiat lux” in Italy, Britain and the United States.

FOR Ballon Bleu de Cartier Jirô TaniguchiBorn in 1947 in Tottori, Japan. Now lives and works in in Tokyo.

FOR Ballon Bleu de Cartier Lorenzo MattotiBorn in 1954 in Brescia, Italy. Now lives and works in Paris.

Richard Mille gives volume to his passion.If watchmaker Richard Mille were to say that he was making something unusual, people would probably do well to pay attention. The Richard Mille watchmaking company officially came into existence in 2001, as its founder wanted to create a watch company that would extend from roots in the Swiss villages of the industry's birth to the latest possibilities of high technology and materials. Richard Mille had been in the watchmaking industry since 1973. He joined the prestigious Mauboussin house in 1994. In 1998 he resigned from Mauboussin as President of the Watch Company and CEO of their Jewelry Company to found his own company, Richard Mille.For three years he labored, fine-tuning his designs and testing them for reliability and precision. His initial release was the RM -001, and he has followed that up with models up to the RM 016, in his mission to create “a performance timepiece... an efficient, relentless watch.”.

This story begins decades ago in a bungalow with squeaky wooden flooring and military surplus desks; my grandfather’s office. It was by no means grand. It looked out into a veritable junkyard he called a machine shop, but to us, his grandchildren, it was a playground and adventure land. Step into his office and on his desk in a special desktop holder sat two glossy black pens with gold tipped ends. They were slim; modern yet reminiscent of those styluses used by scribes in the Middle Ages. A 2006 Conway-Stewart Maki-e Collection Karyoubinga Celestial Maiden Neither the style nor the elegance was what drew me to these pens of his. Rather it was the way they painted the letters onto the page.

ORIS DIZZY GILLESPIE LIMITED EDITION  He wore black, horn-rimmed spectacles and a beret. He used an odd, bent trumpet for his gigs, and his puffy cheeks morphed into strange, unimaginable shapes whenever he played bebop. His name was John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, and he’s bopping wrists with Oris for 2007.Jazz legend John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie inspired Oris’s Dizzy Gillespie Limited Edition timepiece. His portrait is seen on its caseback.

When TAG Heuer started constructing their booth for this year’s Baselworld expo, it was obvious that it was going to be the epitome of the Swiss watchmaker’s commitment to the fusion of design and technology, both hallmarks of timepieces bearing the famous green and red logo. The man tasked to create the new booth, which embodies the brand’s commitment to avantgarde design and aesthetics was Italian architect Ottavio di Blasi. Having been the mastermind behind the daring exhibition booth during the 1994 Baselworld, he was no longer surprised when it came to the demands of this particular client.STRUCTURALLY SOUND - The booth embodies the watch and viceversa. BOLD and ICONIC - We can’t wait to see what TAG Heuer will think of next.POETIC GEOMETRY - Lasers ensured that each triangle is identical to one another.For the 1994 expo, Ottavio di Blasi engineered an archshaped stand, erected with a carbon fiber structure, a world first back then.

We were sitting just off the edge of a cliff that stuck out over the Baia de Setubal having lunch in what was normally a surfer hangout. We questioned the financial intelligence of a surf shack so far above the rolling seas below and linked only by a rutted rocky pass. Our hosts smiled, and said yes, well they were the rich type of surfers and they all had big SUVs anyway. So we all fit right in, visually if not financially, as we drove up with around twenty brand new Porsche Cayennes.Calibre was in Portugal to try out the new Cayenne GTS, the latest variant of the Porsche four by four that has spent its life annoying the purists. Many enthusiasts, ourselves included, have questioned the world in which Porsche needs to make a truck. But the Stuttgart bosses had made their decision, and put on the market a model line that has now become the source of at least one third of all of Porsche’s sales.

The Breguet Type XX isn’t what most budding enthusiasts would consider typical of the storied name’s offerings. It doesn’t have many of the popular innovations and details of worksmanship you come to expect from the watchmaking company.The casework is simple, though it does carry the fluting on the side. The dial shows none of the legendary detailwork expertise for which Breguet has become known and popular, especially if you choose the unique carbon fiber dial that comes with the titanium case. You have no guillochage, no “secret number,” no signature. Even the byword “Breguet hands” only make an appearance on the Chronograph’s seconds hand.A Type XX from 1954 with flyback and straight line lever escapement. Note the similarity in details with the modern XX, including the shape of the subdial hand at 3 o’clock. Note the differences also, the central seconds hand uses a diamond shape rather than the recognized Breguet circle.