Current Issue of IWMagazine at IWMagazine.com! http://www.iwmagazine.com/current_issue.cfm 571 - 2010-02-01 00:00:00 Piaget writes a new chapter into its long history of ultra-thin movements with Caliber 120 http://www.iwmagazine.com/current_issue_detail.cfm/ArticleID/571/ 572 - 2010-02-01 00:00:00 With lives lost, fortunes made and unraveled, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.. http://www.iwmagazine.com/current_issue_detail.cfm/ArticleID/572/ 573 - 2010-02-01 00:00:00 The Galapagos Islands inspire IWC to debut the new Aquatimer collection http://www.iwmagazine.com/current_issue_detail.cfm/ArticleID/573/ 576 - 2010-02-01 00:00:00 In early November the Franck Muller brand hosted the World Presentation of Haute Horlogerie, its annual presentation of new products to retailers and the press, in the larger-than-life yet geographically tiny Principality of Monaco. This installment of the WPHH, the first ever held outside of Switzerland, did not disappoint, its highlight being the presentation of the most complicated wristwatch ever made, the Aeternitas Mega 4, a timepiece five years in the making.In addition to presenting the Aeternitas Mega 4 to Colorado watch collector Michael J. Gould, a client of Naples, Florida, retailer Exquisite Timepieces, the firm unveiled updates and debuts across the Franck Muller brand.  Predictably, this year’s debuts included an assortment of the complications that have made Franck Muller the highly visible brand it is today. But a number of diamond pieces for ladies with extraordinary colored dials, another Muller specialty, also drew considerable attention. (Throughout the event, retailers and brand representatives alike struck an upbeat note about the future of the watch industry, which has taken a major hit as a result of the global recession. One can only hope that such optimism will continue at the 2010 SIHH and BaselWorld watch fairs.)MegaAnticipation has been building since 2005 for the realization of Franck Muller’s Aeternitas Mega 4, the world’s most complicated wristwatch. Its creator, Pierre Michel Golay, holds a special place in the heart of Franck Muller himself. Golay, aged 74, was a mentor and inspirational teacher to Franck Muller as he attended watchmaking school in his teens. Brand co-founders Vartan Sirmakes and Franck Muller drew on Golay’s considerable experience and talents in 2002, making him head of research and development at Franck Muller Watchland. Five years later, Golay launched his own brand of watches within the Franck Muller Group while continuing his work on the most complicated pieces for the Frank Muller brand itself. Aeternitas Mega 4, the pinnacle achievement within the Aeternitas series, is the culmination of the Franck Muller Aeternitas project.In all, the Aeternitas Mega 4 claims thirty-six complications, twenty-five of which are visible on the dial or on the back, and comprises 1,483 components. It is by necessity a large watch, at 61 mm x 41 mm, because many of the complications require their own plots of real estate on the sun-stamped, translucent lacquer dial. It is also the most expensive watch ever sold outside of an auction, the first piece, with the pave ruby case version fetching $2.7 million. The Aeternitas Mega 4 incorporates all of the complications found in previous versions of the Aeternitas series, its basis starting with an in-house automatic tourbillon movement in the firm’s iconic Cintrée Curvex shape and a perpetual calendar designed to remain accurate long after being handed down several generations. With all of the complications requiring a tremendous power supply, Franck Muller used a slow-beat (18,000 bph) movement and two separate platinum micro rotors to power the main movement and the Westminster carillon. Even with all of calendar displays and almost countless functions, the main movement retains a power reserve of three days. The chiming mechanism of the watch has a respectable 24-hour power reserve. http://www.iwmagazine.com/current_issue_detail.cfm/ArticleID/576/ 574 - 2010-02-01 00:00:00 Most people might not be aware that Ron Wood’s talent extends beyond the strings to painting.  Having studied at Ealing Art College in London, Wood never ceased producing his artwork, even after he took up rock music. He paints portraits of the Rolling Stones and other rock and jazz musicians as well as landscapes, and has a respectable exhibition record at various museums and art galleries around the world.  It is easy to understand why creative minds think alike. Bérard’s approach to watchmaking, while satisfying the necessary technical know-how, is artistic in nature in that it draws inspiration from shapes, light and concepts (see International Watch, January 2010, pages 72-76.)Bérard’s wristwatch takes its cues from Bérard’s Quatre Saisons carriage clocks and he has dubbed it with the invented name Luvorene. The word is an anagram for Révolune: rêve meaning dream and lune meaning moon. It is also a play on revolution. Wood so loved Bérard’s Luvorene I model he commissioned one in his favorite color.The round gold red watchcase bulges out at three o’clock, a shape that took its form from Bérard contemplating the columns at the Strasbourg Cathedral.  The domed case has a red guilloché dial, open worked at three o’clock to reveal the oscillating balance with screws and Breguet overcoil balance spring.  Note the absence of the escapement and the lever-wheel.  The large crown had to be reconfigured and placed at 9 o’clock.  Driving this red-hot timepiece features Berard’s unusual manual wind Caliber VB 441 hand finished and decorated movement.The back of the case features an anti-reflective sapphire crystal revealing six spindle-shaped movement bridges taking a staircase form.  A protective red gold covering snaps over the crystal, offering porthole views of the power-reserve indicator and small seconds indices. http://www.iwmagazine.com/current_issue_detail.cfm/ArticleID/574/ 575 - 2010-02-01 00:00:00 Armin Strom’s history began in 1938 with the birth of the watchmaker who was later to become one of the industry’s most celebrated skeletonizers. An additional qualification to the craft of the watchmaker, skeletonizing is not taught in watchmaking schools and can usually only be learned from an older master of the art be or self-taught.Strom taught himself the craft in order to give the pocket and wristwatches he began producing under his own name in the early 1980s a special element to make them more attractive to aficionados and collectors. His reputation was second to none.Approaching an age that had him worrying about the fate of his life’s work and working alone until 2006, he searched out an investor and found one in longtime friend Willy Michel. Armin Strom AG, under the direction of CEO Serge Michel, now offers four distinct families of watches in varying price ranges and with four degrees of skeletonization work. (For more information on this, please see the June, 2009, International Watch.)Last month, Michel, Strom and movement designer Claude Greisler inaugurated a new factory in Biel outfitted with all the trappings necessary to make it a true manufacture. The lower floors contain enough state-of-the-art machinery to make every component of a watch movement except jewels and springs—and this is no accident. Michel and Greisler had planned right from the start to move the company into the range of true manufactures with an in-house movement.Greisler, a movement designer who came to Armin Strom from Christophe Claret, has put his full energy into not only designing an aesthetic, traditional, and reliable movement, but has very passionately taken over the role of production manager, managing the purchasing and functioning of all the new machinery and hiring the new technicians needed to run it. The crowning glory of this machinery is its computer-controlled ability to simulate manufacture.SkeletonizingNow 71, Strom drives to the new factory from his home in Burgdorf four times each week to skeletonize movements and train two young watchmakers who represent a guaranteed continued existence of this company’s most special element. They also apply other decoration and finishing techniques such as engraving, perlage, and côtes de Genève.  A new state-of-the-art galvanic center is located in the room next to them, further releasing Armin Strom from the grasp of suppliers and embellishing the lovingly decorated movements with gold and rhodium plating. The final stop in the chain is found in the last room on the ground floor: complete assembly from A to Z by two young watchmakers. This workshop space retains plenty of benches for watchmakers who will surely join the team once the manufacture movement is in full production. “The little ladies’ watch movements are the most complicated to skeletonize thanks to their size,” Strom asserts with a proud smile as he explains that one basically has to be educated as a watchmaker to complete this work properly. http://www.iwmagazine.com/current_issue_detail.cfm/ArticleID/575/