References to the super Irish rock band aside, the first thing you notice about your average U-Boat watch is its diminutive size…all 50mm of it on the average model! Yes, your typical U-Boat timepiece is not for the weak of disposition: conservative types need not apply. Indeed, the alpha male types of Hollywood royalty grace several pages of the manufactures’ equally oversized brochures and press kits. In case you haven’t figured it out, U-Boat watches, just like their original submarine namesake, are bold, aggressive and oversized. One model, the FLIGHTDECK ECLIPSE, is so masculine, it actually resembles a vintage German WWII hand grenade; definitely not for the faint hearted or, for that matter, the limp wristed (no pun intended).

The functioning of a fountain pen is relatively simple ... the pen holds ink in a reservoir and delivers it to the nib via gravity and capillary action. The earliest successful fountain pens are often called eyedroppers. Simply because you unscrewed the part that held the writing point, or nib, and used an eyedropper to fill the barrel with ink. Without a sac or a filling mechanism to take up space in the barrel, they held a lot of ink and wrote for a long time. The barrel itself was made of hard rubber. And therein lay the problem.

Why care about about D&B’s “flying case”? You will--when you discover it is a truly revolutionary case design and contains one of the rarest movements in the watch market these days. Quite passé and trite to declare, but once in a while, a real gem in the cluttered and confusing world of wristwatches comes along and inspires a genuine flight of fancy.

Jaeger-LeCoultre uses a brand new model line to remind us of their history.Jaeger-LeCoultre has been making some very strong statements lately, bringing forth wristwatches that grab attention and generate discussion at a glance. Their new pieces have been strong, masculine and daring, all in the direction of the next generation of wristwatches. But Jaeger-LeCoultre has been around for rather a long time, and has earned itself the reverential nickname of the Grande Maison. Since 1833, it has brought to the world over one thousand different movements and been granted more than two hundred patents. So while many newly-minted enthusiasts look at the name and think of pieces like the Master Compressor Extreme W-Alarm or the Extreme Lab, Jaeger-LeCoultre has been responsible in many ways for the creation of the classics we look to for purity, design and elegance as well.

What’s the next big step in the watchmaking world? Maybe it shouldn’t be tourbillons, or jewels, or more exotic materials. Maybe it should be service. Upkeep, repair and bringing the customer to and through that process, a process that most won’t understand and may not even expect. But several market forces are coming together to turn the after-market service portion of watch ownership a battleground, whether between brands, between brand and distribution, or even between buyer and brand.First, you have the ever-increasing base of consumers that are paying more and more attention to what they want seen on their wrist. More customers are spending more money and want something more special than ever before. So more customers are going upscale, and buying complications with no real idea yet what goes into what they may be purchasing just for bragging rights.

Even the company name might sound unfamiliar to many who think themselves abreast of the modern watchmaking world. Urwerk. A Geneva company which speaks not in gears, trains, and hands--but in carousels, satellites, and transporters. One look at their wristwatches and--if you don’t already know them--you will definitely not forget them. Their pieces look like nothing else you’ve seen on a wrist. But that is exactly their point. The company Urwerk SA was launched just ten years ago by two brothers and a friend with one principal idea, “to push the boundaries of haute Horlogerie ever further.” Looking at their offerings, one may be inclined to say they pushed one bridge too far.Yet they are thriving, without any hint so far of going mainstream in their designs or their processes. They stay true to their aim and, indeed, to their name.

In 1953, Rolex successfully tested a prototype watch called the Deep Sea Special strapped outside the bathyscape FNRS-2 to a depth of 3,150m or 10,336ft. Rolex proved its design mantra with an ultra-rigid Oyster case. By Basel 1954, they had raised the depth rating on all Submariners to 180m or 600ft, in conjunction with the release of the Submariner model 6204. On January 23, 1960, Rolex pushed the envelope further with the Rolex Piccard (model 7205) attached to the bathyscape Trieste that successfully dived to a depth of 10,916m or 35,800ft. The submariner made a great reputation in professional diving circles that in 1967; Rolex released its first Sea Dweller (model 1665) with the collaboration of COMEX (a French professional deep sea diving company). Fast-forward forty years to Basel in 2008; Rolex has once again forged a technological breakthrough in the mould of their latest divers watch the Sea-Dweller DEEPSEA (SDDS).

Patek Philippe brings us something this year that tells of both complication and creation of beauty, of heart, mind and hand, of body and soul. Of something old, but not of something new. The “new” World Time watch Ref. 5131 has been seen before, and is familiar to enthusiasts, collectors and the industry. Maybe though we should be clearer. It is well known mainly to extremely well-funded enthusiasts and collectors, and a very jealous industry. These watches began appearing over half a century ago, and when they have changed hands in auction since, prices generally start with seven figures. The most immediately eye-catching detail you will notice on the Ref. 5131 is the artwork on the dial. It is a beautiful vision of the map of the world, in cloisonné enamel miniature. Cloisonné is a classic technique of decoration for important, historic and expensive pieces of artwork and craftsmanship.

With its crown uniquely located at either the ten o’clock or two o’clock position, and packaged in a handcrafted watch box wrapped in boar-skin leather, one can already tell that a Manometro timepiece would be different. Its creator, Giuliano Mazzouli would precisely want it that way as his dream of designing a watch unlike anything produced has been his most ambitious project.Before entering the ranks of making fine watches, the Mazzouli family business revolved around the Italian paper making industry, producing high quality paper products. With Italian craftsmanship and quality known worldwide as first rate, the company started producing advertising catalogues for the furniture and interior design industry, another well known bastion for Italian artistry and craftsmanship. Soon after he took over the reins of the family business in 1993, Giuliano Mazzouli began to flex his creativity by taking other everyday objects and transforming them into functional works of art.

ORANGE, simply put is a color between red and yellow. But what has this got to do with diving or the DOXA SUB? It has been tested and proven that when you go diving, the color that is most visible underwater is the color orange. The DOXA SUB has built its reputation on this fact and the color orange. Few non-divers have heard of the watch company DOXA, but if ever a definitive history of the dive watch is written, one manufacturer will stand along side the likes of Rolex, Blancpain, and Omega as being a great dive watch. DOXA S.A. Is a small company from Bienne, Switzerland, but it did more to push the boundaries of submersible watches than many bigger competitors. DOXA was founded in 1889 in the heart of Switzerland’s Canton District of Neuchatel’s Jura mountains by George Ducommun (1868-1936). In 1910, he registered the name DOXA, which in Greek means glory, and began to use it on all his timepieces.