REF. ZERO

An in-house calibre. An hourly chime. A dial born from a mistake. Around £5,000, independent watchmaking can mean some remarkably different things. We looked at six watches to explore what their makers actually bring to the finished object. Our first long read: teapawt.net/Refzerowatch/status/21…

Awake’s new Silver Leaf colours are lovely, but the work behind them is even more interesting. Pure silver leaf, coloured pigments and around twelve layers of Vietnamese Sơn Mài lacquer, sanded and polished by hand. Now in a smaller 38mm case, at €2,640.

MING’s new 51.01 Halo looks like a rose-gold dress watch. It isn’t. The case is grade-5 titanium, heated to up to 1,200°C, cooled, etched to reveal its crystalline grain, then given a 5N rose-gold-coloured coating. An awful lot of engineering for something so understated.

Amsterdam Vintage Watches spends its days finding old watches. Now it’s helped make a new one. The Diplomat 1.87, with Archi Works, is a 35mm hand-wound dress watch with sector dials and lab-grown emerald or sapphire hour markers. A vintage watch that never existed.

Garrick’s new S8 is 39mm. It was originally going to be 40mm. Their reasoning for losing a millimetre is lovely: with no solid dial, the eye travels to the case edge, so the watch reads larger. A tiny design decision, but a thoughtful one.

Two categories we were watching at the GPHG, two jumping-hour winners. Otsuka Lotec’s No.8 takes Petite Aiguille. SpaceOne × Baltic’s Seconde Majeure takes Challenge. Otsuka also won Challenge with the No.6 in 2024. A pretty remarkable two-year run. Congrats to the winners!

After two bankruptcies, Klokers is turning to experienced hands for its comeback. Ikepod owner Christian-Louis Col brought in designer Fabrice Gonet, whose work includes MB&F and De Bethune, to rethink the KLOK03. The rotating discs remain, now layered. The detachable watch-head system is gone.

GPHG night tonight. I’ll be watching Petite Aiguille and Challenge most closely. Christopher Ward, Otsuka Lotec, MING, BEDA’A, SpaceOne × Baltic… very different ideas of what makes a watch interesting. More curious about what the jury rewards than predicting winners.

Most moonphase watches move an image of the moon. Yema’s new Senans Grande Lune moves the mask instead. A sculpted, luminous moon stays fixed as a rotating component reveals and conceals it. An unusual solution in an 8.7mm micro-rotor watch, starting at €2,470.

Watchmaking talent and running a watch company are two different jobs. William Massena and Louis Westphalen-Lemaitre’s new Ateliers Associés aims to fund and support emerging makers for minority stakes of up to 30%. Mickaël Gaspar is first. One to follow. watchpro.com/ateliers-associ…

The most interesting number on Orient Star’s 75th-anniversary Skeleton might not be its 72+ hour power reserve. It’s the 10-year warranty, with three overhauls included. A hand-wound in-house calibre, hand-finished bridges and just 130 pieces. ¥1.1m in Japan.

Kiwame Tokyo’s new Kubo Momiji hides a lovely detail. The small-seconds recess contains a raised maple leaf, lacquered the same deep red as its surroundings. It only reveals itself as the light moves. 37mm, Miyota automatic, ¥84,700 before tax. Orders open 17 November.

Most watch awards look at what’s new. Vacheron Constantin’s concours looks at what collectors have kept and cared for. Over 550 historic pieces entered. Finalists go on show in Geneva today. Judging criteria include provenance, preservation and even an “emotional dimension”. Some beautiful pieces in there. vacheron-constantin.com/fr/e…

Depancel has given the month display a second job. On its Autosport for the 24-hour 2 Tours d’Horloge race, it tracks hours elapsed, not laps. At the end of each race hour, you press the month-corrector to advance the hand. No new complication. Just a clever idea. From €795.

This George Graham pocket watch dates to 1719–20. Now its dial has inspired a new one. For the PS Horology Tsuba 1720, Peter Speake and Farhana Safa reversed the hour and minute scales, then redesigned the distinctive beetle-and-poker hands to suit. More than a nostalgic dial.

One detail I like on the new Jacques Bianchi JB300 Professional: the bezel’s first 15 minutes glow green, while the remaining 45 glow blue. Developed with former US Navy diver Brock Stevens, the contrast is meant to make short underwater timing tasks easier to read.

Moser is best known for taking things off the dial. The new Heritage Chronograph puts a lot back: 1940s styling, blue numerals, twin registers and a tachymeter. The mechanics differ too: an HMC 220 with a Dubois-Dépraz module, not the Streamliner’s Agenhor-developed Agengraph.

Arsène Lippens has added Stelvio and Bellagio to its Artigiano line, with real Italian cotton-and-bamboo fabric dials. 37.5mm, hand-wound Sellita, CHF 1,500. Orders open 5 November. There’s something about these that just says a wool jumper and an evening by the fire.

Rolex has finally published its UK servicing prices. £550 for a modern Datejust or Explorer. £780 for a Daytona. And certain vintage chronographs or moonphases? £7,350. Good to see some transparency around the cost of actually owning these watches, not just buying them. rolex.com/en-gb/watch-care-a…