Timex Brings Back 1970s Legend, The 1979 Black Max; Bell & Ross Goes All Monochromatic; A Brilliant De Rijke & Co. Dress Watch; A Chinese New Year Longines; A Green Bovet; Chaykin Gets A Bit Nude

In partnership with

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. That de Rijke & Co. shows how incredibly talented de Rijke is as a watch designer. He does so much with so little.

Also, a soft reminder that the holiday discount for the premium subscription is still running, and I really appreciate your support.

In this issue

• Timex Brings Back Their 1970s Legend, The 1979 Black Max

• Bell & Ross Goes All Monochromatic With The BR-05 Grey Mirror Steel

• De Rijke & Co. Releases First Dress Watch, And, Oh Boy, Is It A Fantastic Watch

• Longines Is Ready For The Chinese Year Of The Horse With A Red Moonphase

• Panerai Reaches Back Into Its Archives For A Heavily Domed Luminor Marina PAM01759

• Konstantin Chaykin Inspiration From Botticelli’s Birth of Venus For Just A Bit Of Nudity

• FOR WATCH CLUB MEMBERS Watch School Wednesday: Torque, Amplitude, and Consistency; The Hidden Trinity of Timekeeping

👂What’s new

1/

Timex Brings Back Their 1970s Legend, The 1979 Black Max

Over the past few years, Timex has made a lot of people happy by releasing some of their most iconic models, modernizing them a bit and offering them at a great price. The Timex Q collection has proven that this is a very successful business model. And every now and again, they bring back a model with a partner. And that’s exactly what they did to revive a 1970s legend. This is the Huckberry x Timex 1979 Black Max and it’s so cool.

The case of the Black Max is made out of stainless steel, measures 41mm wide and 10mm thick, and has a black PVD coating. On top is a mineral crystal, which is not ideal, as a plexi cover would have been a fantastic choice considering the 70s grooviness. A pleasant surprise is the 100 meter water resistance.

Moving to the dial, the first thing that pops out at you is the massive white steeply angled inner bezel, with a black tachymeter scale. Just like on the original, you get bold hour markers with text that’s done in five-minute interval markings rather than traditional hour numerals, making it look like a stopwatch. The base of the dial is matte black, paired with white hands for the hours and minutes, and a bright orange seconds hand.

Inside, you’ll find an unnamed quartz movement, so we’ll just have to say that’s good enough. What’s better is that the watch comes on a black PVD coated metal bracelet.

The Huckberry x Timex 1979 Black Max is available now, available through both Huckberry and Timex and priced at €239. See more on the Timex website.

2/

Bell & Ross Goes All Monochromatic With The BR-05 Grey Mirror Steel

There are about a dozen genres in which one could place Bell & Ross watches, and none of them would be elegant. They make chunky, square, airplane instrument inspired watches that take up a lot of real estate and lean towards the sporty side of things. And B&R leans a lot towards the sporty and experimental side. However, every now and again they try to pull off a more subdued piece. These might not be to everyones taste, but do have a loyal fan base. Now they’re releasing the very monochromatic BR-05 Grey Mirror Steel.

On the outside, things only seem familiar. You still get the rounded square case that measures 40mm wide and 10.5mm thick. The whole point of this Mirror Steel case is to play with finishings, so you get brushed flat top surfaces, like the case and bezel, that are paired with polished sides and bevels, as well as the screws in the four corners. Water resistance remains 100 meters.

More of the Mirror Steel theme can be found on the dial which has a mirror-polished silver surfaces, interrupted only by the baton markers and the Bell & Ross wordmark. The markers and hands are also done in silver, so you see how fart the brand pushes the monochromatic theme.

Inside, nothing special - the calibre BR-CAL.321-1 which is just a lightly modified Sellita SW300-1 which beats at 4Hz and has a 54 hour power reserve. The watch comes on an integrated steel bracelet which has highly polished center links.

The BR 05 Grey mirror Steel is limited to 250 pieces, priced at €5,900. See more on the Bell & Ross website.

3/

De Rijke & Co. Releases First Dress Watch, And, Oh Boy, Is It A Fantastic Watch

There’s two things you need to know about de Rijke & Co. The first is that its owner, Laurens de Rijke, is a super cool dude and if you ever get a chance to run into him at a fair, do talk to him as he will show you how passionate he is about watches. The second is that I am a huge fan of their driving-style cases. They used them in the Amalfi collection and the Miffy watches — it’s an incredibly cool case that has an inner part that can be rotated to either sit as a traditional watch with the crown at the 1:30 position, or you can pull down that crown all the way to 4:30, pulling the dial with it, to make it easier readable while driving. Now, however, they’re introducing their first dress watch, the Capri collection, and it’s even better.

Being a dress watch, it’s small. It measures 28.5mm wide and 6.5mm thick, with a really small 38mm length. But the dimensions are the least important part of the case. First, you’ll notice that the incredible sapphire crystal, that takes up the majority of the view, curves at the edges, eliminating the need for a bezel and connecting to the caseback on the side. It’s an incredible look. Second, you’ll see that there are no lugs. Instead, the strap enters the case in a well designed aperture that makes it look both futuristic and delightfully retro. Water resistance is 30 meters, which is the exact resistance you need with a watch like this.

The dials might be even better than the case. They curve with the crystal to extend all the way to the back and are extremely simple. There are three versions available — black onyx stone, black aventurine, and Capri Blue lacquer — with all three having centrally mounted hands and no markers. The one big difference is that Capri Blue version has a subtly sunken 6 o’clock sub-dial with 60 seconds marking and a bright red hand. I think this might be my favorite.

Thanks to the two different dial setups, the movements inside are the La Joux-Perret D101 and D100, with the latter being the small-seconds one. Both of these movements are based on the Peseux 7001, beat at 21,600vph and have a 50 hour power reserve. The watches come on black calf leather straps.

The new de Rijke & Co. Capri is limited to 50 pieces per colorway, and priced at €2,195, without tax. See more on the de Rijke & Co. website.

4/

Longines Is Ready For The Chinese Year Of The Horse With A Red Moonphase

Is it just me, or have we not seen as many Chinese Lunar New Year-themed watches this year. I vividly remember all of last December being chock-full of red watches paying tribute to the year of the snake? Either the watch market in China is softening, or they are waiting for January. We’ll see. In the meantime, Longines has released a Master Collection Year of the Horse limited edition that pays homage to the Year of the Horse with some pretty subtle details.

This is not a small watch, but the preference of the Chinese market for larger watches has been a well known thin in the industry. So, this polished stainless steel case measures 42mm wide, 11.2mm thick and has a 49.7mm lug-to-lug. It has a sapphire crystal on top, held down with an unmarked steel bezel, while out back is a transparent caseback. Water resistance is 30 meters.

The domed dial is rendered in a sunray-brushed red, a color that symbolizes joy, prosperity and protection in Chinese culture. And what first better with red than gold — you’ll find it on the indices, the gold-plated leaf-shaped hour and minute hands and the Longines logo. Surrounding the dial is a sloping flange with the minute track, while at 6 o’clock is an aperture for the moonphase (a gold moon on a dark blue background), surrounded by a 31-day scale pointed to with a centrally mounted hand.

Inside is Longines automatic calibre L899.5, which is based on the ETA A31.L91, which, in turn, is a significantly updated ETA 2892-A2. It has a silicon balance spring, beats at the slightly unusual 3.5Hz and has a 72 hour power reserve. On the rotor, however, you’ll find an engraving of a galloping horse done by Peon Xu, a renowned modern Chinese painter. The watch comes on a black alligator leather strap.

The new Longines Master Collection Year of the Horse is limited to 2,026 pieces, priced at €3,100. See more on the Longines website.

5/

Bovet Releases Special Green Edition To Celebrate Seddiqi 75th Anniversary

A year or two ago, Bovet released a watch that solved one of the bigger issued of world timer watches — the fact that Daylight Saving Time is not observed by all countries, and even those that do, they start observing it on different dates. And there’s just no way to account for all of these intricacies. Well, no easy way, because Bovet managed to do exactly that with their Récital 28 Prowess 1 which featured not just a tourbillon, but also a roller-based city-indication that lets you account for DST. Then, they followed that up with the Récital 30, a simplified approach to the same complication. It’s this Récital 30 that the brand uses to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons, UAE’s leading luxury watch retailer, with a great green colorway.

Based on the regular Récital 30, it has the same case that measures 42mm wide and 12.9mm thick and can be had in either titanium or red gold. On top is a ultra-domed sapphire crystal and of course you get a transparent caseback since it’s Bovet that pioneered this approach way back in the 19th century. You get a cabochon-set crown and pushers at 2 and 4 to operate the world timer.

Unlike the Récital 28 Prowess 1, the dial of the Récital 30 is much more traditional, with no toubillon visible. It does have the massive time roller display that enables adjustment to any of the four annual UTC periods: UTC Coordinated Universal Time – AST, American Summer Time – EAS, European and American Summer Time – EWT, European Winter Time. This ensures all world time zones, are covered. All of them, expect for New Dehli, which is offset by 30 minutes and was available in previous versions. For this special edition, New Delhi is no longer marked on the minutes track, and there’s no dedicated extra minutes hand. What you do get is a green guilloché center and DUbai written in red and Eastern Arabic.

Inside is the R30-70-001 automatic movement which beats at 4Hz and with a pretty great 60 hour power reserve. It’s also super easy to set the world time. The 2 o’clock pusher rotates the rollers by 90 degrees, automatically adjusting all 24 time zones to the correct seasonal period. The 4 o’clock pusher advances the central 24-hour world dial by one hour per press. The watch comes on a green and white rubber strap.

The new Bovet X Ahmed Seddiqi 75th Limited Edition Récital 30 is limited to seven numbered pieces, available through Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons, priced at CHF 68,000 in titanium and CHF 96,800 in red gold. See more on the Seddiqi website.

6/

Konstantin Chaykin Inspiration From Botticelli’s Birth of Venus For Just A Bit Of Nudity

Russia’s most well known watchmaker, Konstantin Chaykin, is way more than just a watchmaker. I doubt the man remembers the last time he made a conventional looking watch. The last years of his career have been dedicated to creating Wristmons — tiny wrist creatures that take the form of a watch — and the Joker watches. Chaykin is a true artist, in the fullest meaning of the word. So, it’s makes sense that he would take inspiration from great art that came before him. His latest watch is made in collaboration with Italian retailer GMT, and draws from one of the most famous pieces of art in the world — Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. The result is a slightly risque reinterpretation of Chaykin’s iconic dial setup in a slightly risqué way.

Despite this being a limited collaboration with a retailer, no corners were cut. Most of these collabs end up being just a new dial in an already existing case, but not here. Sure, it’s a fairly simple case, but it’s different from the one used in other Wristmons models. It’s made out of brushed stainless steel and measures 40mm wide and 12.9mm thick. On top is a polished concave bezel, with sapphire crystals on top and bottom, and you get 30 meters of water resistance.

But it’s all about that incredible dial. A gold colored base gets a guilloché pattern that is meant to mimic Venus’ flowing hair, framing an opening that serves as her face. Inside is the moon phase indication, with a floating illustration of eyes and nose above it. I’m getting very strong Picasso vibes from this dial, instead of Botticelli, but I like it a lot. Chaykin has been best known for using two rotating discs to tell the hours and minutes, and usually uses these discs as eyes for Wristmons. Here, they’re Venus’ boobs. Very demure and tasteful.

Inside, you’ll find the simple La Joux-Perret G200 which beats at the same 4Hz, but now has a 68 hour power reserve, a full balance bridge and a free-sprung balance with variable inertia. But on top of that, Chaykin puts an in-house-developed module for the rotating rings. The watch comes on a black alligator leather strap with blue stitching.

The new Konstantin Chaykin Venus is limited to 99 pieces, priced at €21,430. See more on the Konstantin Chaykin website.

FOR WATCH CLUB MEMBERS Watch School Wednesday: Torque, Amplitude, and Consistency; The Hidden Trinity of Timekeeping

How three invisible forces keep mechanical watches running steady. Read it here. 

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• In 2008, a flood imperiled the University of Iowa Museum of Art’s collection, which had been insured for around $250 million. Thousands of pieces of art were ultimately moved before the water found its way into the building. But some pieces—a $140 million Jackson Pollock, for instance—took priority. Lou Stoppard details the processes by which museums great and small strive to protect their collections.

• For the The New Statesman, Kate Mossman tells the story and aftermath of British Airways flight 2069, a near-disaster in that took place over Christmas, 2000. Scant months before 9/11, a student experiencing mental illness stormed the cockpit of the 747 on its way to Nairobi with 400 passengers aboard. His aim? To take down the jet in an apparent suicide attempt.

• Japan's fake food replicas have captivated the world—but their artistry runs deeper than mere illusion. From a humble onion to towering pancakes, shokuhin sampuru represent a century-old craft where skilled hands transform wax into impossibly lifelike dishes. In museums, on restaurant windows, and in Tokyo workshops, these culinary fakes reveal something profound about how we see, desire, and consume.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

What a jam!

Thanks for reading,
Vuk