Recent Articles
A Legend Lives On
James Free Fall/Winter 2023
Long before there was a Mexican Grand Prix on the F1 circuit, there was the Carrera Panamericana, an annual road race that began in 1950 to celebrate the completion of the Mexican section of the Pan-American Highway. Sponsored by Mexico’s National Automobile Association and encouraged by the Mexican govern- ment to increase tourism, it was a perilous, nine-stage, five-day, 2,096-mile, border-to-border trek through major climate and elevation changes that ran from Juárez in the north all the way
to Cuauhtémoc on the Guatemalan border to the south. In 1951, Time magazine said the route consisted of “hairpin curves, roll- er-coaster dips and erratic paving...bone-jarring at tourist speeds, and highly dangerous for even the most experienced racer.” After the 1955 LeMans racing disaster, authorities decided the Carrera Panamericana was too dangerous to continue.
During its five-year sojourn, however, the alluringly dangerous race attracted F1, Rally and NASCAR drivers from all over the world as well as European and American manufacturers. It drew close to two million spectators, was marked by a shocking 27 fatalities, and inspired two of Mexico’s greatest racing drivers, brothers Pedro and Ricardo RodrÍguez, for whom Mexico’s Grand Prix circuit, the Autódromo Hermanos RodrÍguez, was named.
When Jack Heuer met the RodrÍguez brothers at Twelve Hours of Sebring in Florida in 1962, they regaled him with tales of the short-lived Carrera Panamericana, which in turn inspired him to create a wristwatch reflecting the spirit of that legendary race. One year later, Heuer debuted what would become a legend
The Heyday of Watchmaking, U.S.A.
Accent Magazine Fall/Winter 2021
For a time, Yankee ingenuity-- the new mass production methods-- had Switzerland on the run, and then the Swiss struck back. An article about the rise and fall of the American watchmaking industry with a sidebar about IWC, a Swiss brand that was born in the U.S.A.
Dates With Destiny
Accent Magazine Spring/Summer 2023
The Roman poet Virgil wrote, “All our sweetest hours fly fastest.” Virgil, of course, was not making a scientific observation, but a psychological one about the human perception that time accelerates in correlation with how joyfully it is spent. Time, however, moves at a constant rate independent of our endeavors whether sweet or bitter and requires precision instruments to accurately mark its passage like Patek Philippe’s remarkable collection of simple, annual, and perpetual calendar watches.
Mark of Success
Accent Magazine Fall/Winter 2021
In art and architecture, Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, is often depicted as a winged figure holding a palm leaf. Though Victoria was particularly worshipped by the Roman military, the people of Rome believed she presided over all their victories and successes including those in sports, science, art, and business. Today palm leaves, or fronds, bring to mind a subtler version of success characterized by the sunny skies, warm island breezes, and lush tropical landscapes of an earthly paradise.
Inspired by Audacity
Accent Magazine Spring/Summer 2022
Beginning in 1927 with Mercedes Gleitze, the first Englishwoman to swim the English Channel and Rolex’s first brand ambassador, Rolex has long championed women with the audacity to strive for and achieve excellence. The role of women continued to evolve in the years after World War II. Inspired by women like actress Audrey Hepburn, writer Francoise Sagan, and equestrian Pat Smythe, women began to manage their own time and chase their own successes. Rolex took note, and in 1957 Rolex unveiled a watch inspired by and created for assertive, independent women forging their own paths to success, the Oyster Perpetual Lady Datejust. At just 28mm, the Lady Datejust was a technical and cultural achievement putting the reliability and precision of a men’s watch into a case sized for a woman.
The Tudor Tradition
Accent Magazine Fall/Winter 2023
The War of the Roses was a 13 year-long conflict in medieval England between the House of Lancaster and the House of York, so named because both houses used a rose as their emblem: red for Lancaster and white for York. At the conclusion of the war, a Lancaster man sat upon the throne. He quickly and smartly married a York woman. The man was Henry VII (father of Henry VIII and grandfather of Elizabeth I), the very first Tudor King. Understanding his new dynasty required a new emblem, Henry VII created what is still known today as the Tudor Rose. Sometimes called the Union Rose, the Tudor rose is made up of five red petals surrounding five white petals to symbolize the unification of the two previously warring houses.
Perhaps it is this idea of a union between two things at odds that inspired Hans Wilsdorf in 1926 when he wrote, “For some years now, I have been considering the idea of making a watch that our agents could sell at a more modest price than our Rolex watches, and yet one that would attain the standard of dependability for which Rolex is known. I decided to form a separate company with the object of making and marketing this new watch. It is called the TUDOR watch company.”
Watches with Principles
James Free Fall/Winter 2023
In 1904, talented watchmakers Paul Cattin and Georges Christian decided to go their own way. They left Le Locle, the city at the heart of the Swiss watchmaking industry, for the small village of Hölstein deep in the spectacularly beautiful Waldenburg Valley. There they purchased a recently closed hat factory and formed a new company they named for a nearby brook, Oris.
Since its founding, Oris has claimed “go your own way” as its guiding principle. Today that sentiment is one of three pillars that form the foundation of the company’s value system. The second is that “things must make sense.” This independent spirit, guided by a tradition of rationality, inspired Oris’s role in overturning in 1966 a watch statute that had impeded industry innovation. The idea guided the company through the quartz crisis of the 1970s and ’80s, galvanizing a successful management buyout and the subsequent decision to abandon the manufacture of quartz watches for mechanical ones only. In 2021, Oris was certified as a climate-neutral company by ClimatePartner underlining the third pillar, “change for the better.”
The Spirit of Aviation
Accent Magazine Fall/Winter 2022
On the morning of April 3, 1933, 33,000 feet above sea level in two open cockpit planes battling an air temperature of -50° F and adverse winds of more than 100 mph, Sir Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, David McIntyre, Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker, and Sydney R. G. Bonnet made history by flying over the summit of Mt. Everest. Rolex Oyster wristwatches were on board.
Workmanship as Art
appearing in Lee Michaels & Accent Magazine Fall 2022
The technical skills of a master photographer are often overlooked in our quick-snap smartphone culture. Even as the more thoughtful among us admire professional work as aesthetically exceptional, we are not necessarily conscious of the photographer’s technical skill and deep knowledge of light, space, time, geometry, physics, and aesthetics and art history that form the foundation of his or her virtuosity.
Such is the case with many of the world’s art forms. As spectators we admire and appreciate the beauty of a piece, but rarely the technical and functional skills painstakingly acquired and deployed throughout the process of creating it, with one great exception, fine Swiss watchmaking. Swiss watchmaking is one the few art forms that wears its technical prowess on its—and your—sleeve, marrying the beauty of a wearable piece of art with the technical perfection of a highly functional tool.
Timely Trio
Accent Magazine Spring/Summer 2022
Up until nine years ago, it was believed that the chronograph—derived from the Greek words “chronos” meaning time and “graphein” meaning to write—was invented by a man named Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec in 1821. Designed to time horse races and accurate to the second, Rieussec’s mechanism dropped a spot of ink on the dial to mark the interval, literally writing time as the name suggests.
However in 2013, it was discovered by watch historians including former head of the Patek Philippe Museum Arnaud Tellier, that a watchmaker named Louis Moinet had, in fact, created a stopwatch mechanism five years prior in 1816. Intended to be used for astronomy, Moinet’s invention was accurate to 1/60th of a second. Much like modern chronographs, Moinet’s invention did not use ink. Though the chronograph’s origin story has changed, its name and its status as one of the most popular and useful watch complications live on.