you are trapped in here with us
When I was about fifteen, God got up abruptly, and left by the back door. As the door shut quietly, he said, “I’ll be back soon enough, carry on for now.” It certainly took something away from Christmas and Easter in the short term. Rituals became shallow and lost meaning. The direction and purpose that… Continue reading Leave the seat down: a search for a vintage watch collecting philosophy
When you pop the back of a mechanical watch and see the intricate springs and gears in motion making incremental measures of time on the dial side, one can’t help but be amazed. If you have no watchmaking skills, you may also be confused. There are layers of complexity in even a simple three hander.… Continue reading Did Swatch choose wisely?
Greg: Are there any burning issues that need to be addressed? Here is my late night thought: Not all “vintage inspired” pieces are the same. What makes one work and one not? I am thinking of a Timex/Todd Snyder collab up on our favorite forum. It looks like any number of mid-century watches, but this… Continue reading Duologue No. 1: Reimagining Vintage for Modern Tastes
Trial is stylized combat. Rather than being decided with feats of strength or marksmanship it is a contest of words and persuasion. Facts matter too. We blame the inconvenient facts when we lose and give our golden tongues the credit when we win. Next week I will be in a small rural county seated next… Continue reading A vain man justifies his preconceptions…
What follows is an argument. This is an argument that I have often, in many contexts, but it always begins as a definitional argument. When we use certain terms, what do we mean?[i] Much has been written recently about the importance and desirability of sustainability in the watch industry. What does it mean to buy… Continue reading Some thoughts on sustainable watches
Am I ahead of a fashion trend, or way behind? I will let you decide. I think that I am behind. Maybe the watch world is not fashion after all. According to the fashion industry consultants Heuritech, the fashion industry experience cycles in roughly twenty-year increments. First there is the “introduction” of the trend,… Continue reading Old man fashion
The concept of the wristwatch is older than the concept of the weekend. Abraham-Louis Breguet probably made the first wristwatch for the Queen of Naples in 1810. Sixty-nine years later, in 1879, the British magazine Notes and Queries first used the term “week-end” to describe the comings and goings of workers. (The weekend is only… Continue reading Everybody’s working for the weekend…
I had a question of involving watch manners recently, or maybe it was watch etiquette, either way, it was a conundrum. Sometimes when I am hunting some vintage brand or model, I will send a picture of it to Kaysia or Chris to bounce it off of them. Sometimes, they do that to me. Occasionally,… Continue reading What can Emily Post tell us about watches?
One of the evergreen topics on watch forums and among enthusiasts is the question of proper watch size. Can watches be too large or too small? (The answer is, of course, yes.) Lovers of small watches lament certain brands only releasing watches in large sizes (looking at you Citizen and Bulova). Lovers of large watches… Continue reading Additional thoughts on small watches
The other day I described the “slow twitch” way of purchasing a watch. On the other end of the spectrum is the “fast twitch” mode of operating. Having a quick trigger is relatively easy with new watches. You have a good idea what quality you will receive. The watch will tell time, it is just… Continue reading The Fast Twitch Gamble
The Escapement Room 