One of the treats of attending Baselworld is the opportunity to chat and see the creations of "geniuses" in a relax and informal settings. This was part of my day today when I got a chance to see and photographs Vianney Halter's original and latest creations.
Celebrating 20 years since the launch of the famous Antiqua perpetual calendar watch, which many claim as helping start and spearhead the independent watch making wave, he's back to Basel to show his latest creations.
Above are two new and reissue pieces. First the steel time-only watch introduced for the 20th anniversary that represents a watch version of the time-only dial of the Antiqua. Limited to 20 numbered examples. And the phenomenaly heavy but wearable platinum classic Janvier Masterpiece Equation of Time, with a dial that includes hands for the solar mean time and one for the age of the moon.
Finally the GPHG 2011 winner Deep Space Tourbillon in gold with a triple axis tourbillon that includes jumping minutes. It's a watch that takes the master watchmaker a full three years to create. The one shown here is for a customer and I would not dare try it on for risk of causing any scratch to this work of art.
These are all truly rare, as Vianney only creates about 50 watches a year, and all by hand and at his Atelier. Enjoy these pics as this is unfortunately as close as many of us will get to one of these beauties in the metal.
One of the winners in the 2019 GPHG awards in the first week of November was a two year old upstart watch brand from Kuala Lumpur named MING Watches. The young brand won best watch in the Challenge category at the Geneva show to the delight of its founder and watch aficionados who have regularly helped sell out the brand’s 11 prior releases since its debut of the 17.01 watch.
MING watches are not limited per we but are produced in small batches of a few hundreds, which in effect make them limited. A quick perusal to their web site shows that all models, except for the two new 2019 models have sold out. Interestingly the new models are also priced much higher than the previous ones. However, before getting ahead of ourselves, how does one go about seeing or trying on a MING watch?