3-Watch Thursday #64
Bremont, Baltic, Cartier and Delugs
Good afternoon team,
Welcome to 3-Watch Thursday #64. Apologies for the late one today! But here we are with another week of recommended reading in the watch space.
So sit back, grab an afternoon cup of tea, and enjoy the read.
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The Plea For Proportionality
Whilst the Hodinkee comments on this one highlight this article is like preaching to the converted, I can’t help but feel this is a slightly more nuanced approach to the idea of reduced watch sizes.
The TLDR is: manufacturers know >40mm watches sell.
Enthusiasts, regardless of gender want smaller and more creative watches.
Tudor with the BB54 made a statement that all watches can be made to the same specs as larger watches but smaller.
Smaller watches and stone dial watches are becoming more mainstream.
Will manufacturers just listen and stop gendering watches.
Ultimately with more demand, the manufacturers will start to make smaller watches. If they’re making money, they’ll follow that.
However, I wonder what the sales numbers on BB54 are.
Malaika highlights how people in fashion often want to be ahead of the trend, or off the trend entirely, but watches are in a weird place between style and technology.
Following a technology angle, Apple thought there was decent demand for an iPhone Mini. After all, phones have gotten rather large in recent years.
But after 2 generations it was a flop and was pulled.
Not enough consumers wanted it for it to stick around.
I’m not saying that non-gendered watches won’t stay, or anything like that, more that the brands are out here trying to make money, we exist in a bit of an echo chamber and I wonder what further releases we’ll see over the next few years.
Bremont Cannon Pinion
Last week, The Naked Watchmaker on Instagram posted the above picture of a modified cannon pinion in the Bremont ENG300 movement.
Bremont and R&D can often be a bit of a touchy subject. This article by Robin Swithinbank on Hodinkee back when the ENG300 was released should provide some context.
The TLDR is: Bremont have a licensing agreement to the K1 movement developed by a group called THE+. Bremont have modified 80%1 of these movements through R&D of their own.
The Naked Watchmaker has this article detailing the modifications. One of these is the cannon pinion above that has these subtracted clip shapes.
They form what is usually a crimp and improve the cannon pinion performance for servicing. If the spring bends as opposed to the traditional crimping of material it lasts far longer.
Clever.
The Naked Watchmaker goes into more detail on other modified components of the ENG376. One of the key features of the K1/ENG300 is that it can be modular meaning chronographs, dates and other features can be added pretty easily. For Bremont this can speed up R&D as they work towards manufacturing a more components in the UK.
There is obviously a lot of thought and development that has gone into these movements post obtaining rights to the K1, but all this began under the older leadership. It will be interesting to see where they go from here.
Baltic Prismic Design
Watch designer Eloïse Richet shared some of the drawings on this Instagram post last week for the new Baltic Prismic.
I simply found it quite cool as it’s not something we see often.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk this week, apologies for the tardiness again.
Catch you all next week and have a lovely weekend!
Owen
P.s. If anyone is at Redbar Oxford this Saturday, I’ll be there and might bump into you.
By weight - I can only assume the bridges constitute a lot of this.