Loupe. Issue 16. Spring 2020.

The Magazine of Christopher Ward.

Issue 16. Spring 2020

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Do your Do research. your research.

christopherward.co.uk christopherward.co.uk

Contents

Loupe.

Features

The Magazine of Christopher Ward.

Every issue it’s my pleasure to get to talk to all sorts of interesting people about interesting subjects, but a few of the things they say stick in my head longer than others. One such this time around was a seemingly throwaway comment by Zach Weiss of top watch website Worn and Wound. He said, “When you have the choice of a bracelet you should take it, even if you don’t want to wear it,” which seems to me spot-on: generally, I prefer my watches on leather, but I know the strap I buy now will be for landfill eventually (leather being hard to recycle for some reason), while the bracelet will last forever. And what Zach says is especially true with the advent of quick-release technology – a Christopher Ward strong suit – meaning it’s never been easier to swap between looks at will.

In this baffling, convoluted world, it’s nice to know some things are a no brainer.

Matt Bielby

Twenty-twenty foresight 2020 might seem like the perfect year for looking backward rather than forwards, but we’re not big fans of hindsight at CW, preferring to always keep our focus firmly on the future. And what a year we have to look forward to, starting with the release of the two new titanium C60 Elite 1000 watches, including the stunning black and red version which proudly adorns the front of this issue.

14 – 21

Light brigade

One of Christopher Ward’s fastest sellers ever, the limited edition C60 Elite 1000, is back – and now as a series run. And there's an ace new colour scheme too

23 – 27

Gossamer wings

Not just beautiful, butterflies are also one of our very best bellwethers for the health (or lack of it) of the world around us

28 – 31

Electric dreams

32 – 37

Top calibre

38 – 41

The List

The four JJ Calibres remain amongst the most impressive pieces of watchmaking Christopher Ward has ever attempted. This is their story

The more famous people get, the shorter their tempers – or so it sometimes seems. We take a close look (but not too close; we're too scared for that) at fourteen of the greatest hissy fits in history

Are electic cars the future? Really?

We take an in-depth look, with the help of one of CW's favourite car companies, Morgan

A titanium GMT will follow later in the spring, yet these are just the antipasti to a full menu of exciting developments in 2020 which will include several feats of horological engineering – including a development of our retro dive collection that will blow your fins off!

So, no looking back here; just real excitement at the prospect of 2020 being our most exciting year yet.

Mike & Peter

Butterfly's ball 23 — 27

Regulars 07 – 12

The Brief Fancy your C65 Dartmouth in blue, or in black? Decisions, decisions. Plus, meet the newest, hairiest member of the CW team

43 – 50

Insight What we do, and how we do it. A special look at straps and bracelets, with Mike France, Adrian Buchmann and special guest Zach Weiss from Worn and Wound. Plus: a famous exPresident picks the least famous Rolex watch

Editor: Matt Bielby Art Director: Jamie Gallagher Designer: Sam Burn Photography: Peter Canning

Mighty modules 32 — 37

Cover: C60 Elite 1000 1 Park St, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 1SL christopherward.co.uk

Titanium, man 14 — 21

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Mean machine

News, reports & innovations.

This issue: New colourways, a new Challenger, and a new furry team member

C60 Abyss Little excites quite like the growl of an engine. That’s until you see the C60 Abyss, our prancing dark horse on the grid. With menacing stealthy visuals and robust technicality, it’s the definition of engineering with attitude.

Do your research.

What’s better than a C65 Dartmouth in blue? The new black version, of course!

(Or is it? Decisions, decisions...)

christopherward.co.uk

7

With dive watches always a popular choice – and ’60s style dive watches, in particular, having a moment that doesn’t look set to end any time soon – the C65 Dartmouth Series 1 was always going to be one of the most popular choices amongst CW’s hit Military Collection. Until now, however, choosing your Dartmouth has been pretty easy: do you want to pair its deep blue face with a steel bracelet, blue webbing strap, blue hybrid strap or vintage brown leather?

(Or, of course, buy more than one, taking advantage of the C65’s quick-release strap capability?) As you can see from the picture above, however, decisions have just got a little trickier, for the Dartmouth is now also available with a black face, paired with Old Radium Super-LumiNova®.

This brings its look even closer to that of the famous Royal Navy Omega 300 ‘Big Triangle’ that was a major inspiration, while upping the retro appeal too.

The C65 Dartmouth Series 1 Black is available from March, priced from £795

Only a winter’s tale

The Trouble with Truffles Sure, they’re delicious. But truffles are also expensive – and hard to find At least, they are if you don’t own a truffle dog... Luckily, CW does. Paws-ing for a moment in his dial-checking task, here’s Christopher Ward’s new canine colleague, Charlie. He’s an Italian ‘water dog’ turned Swiss truffle-hunting hound, introduced to the team by Product Manager Jörg Bader, Jr. “Office dogs are known to improve productivity and reduce stress,” says Jörg. “Charlie’s a Lagotto Romagnolo, bred for his special nose – and he’s already found several truffles for us!”

Of course, Charlie’s never allowed into the watchmaking areas, and only ‘speaks’ Swiss German... but he welcomes all couriers with a loud ‘Schuss’, and can’t resist food. Belly rubs from visitors are always very welcome.

Zach speed A strong voice and lyric-driven songs make Zach Johnson CW’s new musical Challenger

Or six of them, rather. Christopher Ward’s pre-Christmas campaign told touching tales, highlighted six of the most exciting new watches – and did good work for charity too. Over Christmas 2019, the ‘Winter Stories’ campaign – running across the website during the build up to the holidays – highlighted seasonal news from six CW Challengers and friends of the company, alongside six of the best selling watches. During

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this period, for each of these watches bought, a 5% donation was made to new partner Blue Marine Foundation, a charity that protects the world’s oceans. Excitingly, Blue Marine is currently at the outset of a project to create a network of ‘National Parks in the sea’ for the UK, making a brighter future for our native marine life.

Christopher Ward has a new musical Challenger in Zach Johnson, an exciting new singer/songwriter with a folk-indie feel.

He won the 2019 Thame Town Songwriting Competition, and was voted Best Newcomer at the Graham Steel Music Awards a couple of years ago, while his latest single – ‘New Blockbuster’ – has gained extensive radio play and critical acclaim. “Music has

For more, christopherward.co.uk/blog

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always been a hugely personal thing for me,” Zach says, “so it’s amazing to find such great people at Christopher Ward who share my vision, and want to help me continue to do what I love.”

For more, www.zjohnsonmusic.com

Drawing Board Colour pop Featuring a modified version of the C65’s 41mm ‘light-catcher’ case to accommodate the needs of its automatic bi-compax chronograph movement – Sellita’s SW510 – the upcoming C65 Trident Chronograph is shaping up to be a truly handsome piece, with a really strong late ’60s-early ’70s feel to it.

Partly this means colour: “We’re still deciding what the lead colour scheme should be,” says Adrian Buchmann, Christopher Ward’s head of product design, “but part of the joy of this period in watch design comes from the rich, bright hues used. The dials might be blue or green, you could have a coloured tachymeter scale, and many watches of the period even had bright-

An early Brietling Co-Pilot was part of the inspiration

The latest incarnation of the successful C65 range has a ’60s dive-chronograph look, and colourful details to die for

ly painted sub-dials or elements to the sub-dials – it’s a complete embarrassment of riches, really.”

Not that Adrian wants to go overboard with this stuff, but the final design – mainly the work of William Brackfield, CW’s junior product designer – even features a small date window at 6pm, giving yet another opportunity to add a spot of colour.

This watch is in an open series, and features an open case back so you can see the movement whirring away, its rotor decorated with the now-familiar twin-flags logo. There’s a screw-down crown and even screw-down pushers, meaning this isn’t just a striking watch, but one with serious diving credentials too.

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Heuer’s colourful Skipper of 1968

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Product of the environment

Team spirit

The iceman cometh Meet Vincent Gamboni, finance and IT manager at CW’s atelier in Biel. He’s got huge history with Jörg Bader Snr too…

What's your background, Vincent?

I was born and brought up in Biel and, after earning a business degree and doing the obligatory military service, started as accounting clerk at a company producing industrial machines. I stayed there almost nine years, at the beginning working on a green-text-on-a-black-screen terminal and making backups using 8 inch floppy drives. (If I mentioned that now, nobody would know what I was talking about.)

And how did you get into the industry?

In 1987 I started to work for a company called Meliga Habillement Horloger SA, delivering watch parts – cases, bracelets – to different third party watch companies.

The director who hired me there was Jörg Bader, Snr. Later, in 2001, Jörg negotiated a deal with the Fossil Group, based in Dallas, and we became part of that organisation; I stayed as finance manager for 20 years, until 2017, but eventually – following a restructuring – lost my job.

But then CW merged with what had become Synergies Horlogères, didn’t it?

Yes, and Jörg got in touch again to ask me

to join Christopher Ward SA. I started here in June 2018 as finance and IT manager, and I’m really enjoying it; a small company is more exciting than at a big group, as you have to do far more things.

What do you get up to day-to-day?

Things like performing checks and analysis of our figures, preparing salaries and monthly reporting, but since I started there’s been much more to do: I’ve had to create a new reporting system, and this summer I was responsible for migrating all our systems to a cloud solution. This IT migration has introduced plenty of new tools we didn’t have before, so I’ve been trying to work out which of them we can use to improve our administrative processes.

How much are you into watches?

I’ve started to like them more and more as I’ve been in the industry, and now have a small collection of over 130 watches, including new Christopher Ward pieces and a number of Zodiacs, as that was the own brand of the company I was working for before CW. When travelling, I wear my Christopher Ward Worldtimer – so I always 12

Vincent Gamboni, Finance and IT Manager, Biel

know what time it is in Switzerland, in case I want to call my friends.

We hear you’re into ice hockey too…

I'm the equipment guy for two teams: Juniors U20 of our local team, EHC Biel, and EHC Bucheggberg, which plays in the second division of the non-professional league. I’ve been doing this since I was 16; it means I'm pretty busy during ice hockey season, which runs August to March – sharpening the skates, bringing along drinks – but it doesn’t get much easier in the summer, as I then do the same thing for an inline hockey team, HC Laupersdorf!

What’s it like working again with Jörg?

Some of the same people are here at Christopher Ward as were working with Jörg 21 years ago! Perhaps the most memorable member of the team, though, is much more recent – Charlie, the office dog. He actually belongs to Jörg Jnr, but we’ve all adopted him, and are so happy to have him ‘working’ with us.

C65 Anthropocene noun: anthropocene /’an0rəpə,si:n/ The current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.

Do your research.

christopherward.co.uk

C60 Elite 1000

The unbeatable

of titanium

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The C60 Trident Elite 1000 LE was the fastest selling watch that Christopher Ward has ever made.

But there were only 300 of them, and when they were gone, they were gone. Meet the replacement – and it’s better than ever…

It’s somewhat extraordinary, but nothing Christopher Ward has ever done generated quite the response that the C60 Trident Elite 1000 did last year. It was clearly a remarkable piece – but also quite a high end watch, with immense ability, costing comfortably over £1,000 and made of an unusual metal, titanium. Little wonder, then, that the impact it had took everyone by surprise.

“We were genuinely shocked by the response last May, when we launched the new Trident 3 line with the Elite 1000 as its spearhead,” says Christopher Ward co-founder Mike France. “We thought the Elite version would do well, but not this well – and it immediately became the fastest selling watch we've ever had.

We were soon inundated with calls for more. But, as it had been a limited edition, that wasn't immediately possible.”

You can see the solution to this conundrum on these pages: the new C60 Elite 1000 – the same watch, but significantly (though not radically) improved in a number of different ways.

First up, the movement has been upgraded to the Sellita SW220 COSC – still of chronometer standard, as was

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the Sellita SW200 in the old LE, but better in that it now boasts a day date function rather than a simple date. Hence the new, longer window at three o’clock.

Secondly, a titanium version of the successful and popular C60 Trident bracelet is available for the first time, allowing you to give your Elite a new look.

Thirdly, there’s an exhibition caseback, a first for an Elite 1000.

And fourth, the watch now comes in two different colours: the shiny navy blue with orange highlights that was so popular with the initial offering, plus a new black dial version, this time with subtle red highlights. If you don’t fancy the bracelet, though, you can pick a hybrid rubber/Cordura® strap in black or navy (either with or without a bright underside, just seen at the edges when worn, in red or orange respectively). Or, of course, buy bracelet and strap both, and then swap between them thanks to quick-release technology.

Otherwise things remain the same: water resistance is still a mighty 100 ATM (or 1000M), the case is still Grade 2 titanium, and the bezel is ceramic.

Oh, one more thing. It’s an open series

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– so you’ll be able to lay your hands on one, guaranteed.

“We always feel we need to move forward,” Mike says, “so we didn't just want to bring out another limited edition, nearly identical to the last one but perhaps using a different colour scheme. So we started thinking about ways in which we could usefully enhance the Elite, and expanding the date function to a day date seemed the perfect starting point. Though this is a serious piece of diving kit, it's also a watch that will be worn every day, and in that context a day date window is a useful function. Using Sellita's SW220 COSC allowed us to do that, and though it’s a little more expensive than the original movement, we’ve managed to absorb that cost, so can offer the series version for the same price as the old LE.” But that’s far from the only change

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“You can immediately tell the difference between steel and titanium when you wear or hold a watch”

to this new Elite, and the option of a new titanium bracelet to go with it is perhaps even more exciting. “This was much requested,” Mike says, “and investing in its development was something of a no brainer, considering how fast the first Elite sold. In the same tried-and-tested style as the existing Trident 3 stainless steel bracelet – complete with micro-adjustment feature and quick-release mechanism – it will hopefully be with us for a very long time.”

Titanium, of course, has numerous properties that make it perfect for a dive watch. Its remarkable strength-to-density ratio makes a titanium dive watch much lighter than it would be made of steel, and the metal has phenomenal anti-corrosive properties too, perfect for anything that’s going to come into regular contact with sea water.

But for Christopher Ward’s head of product design, Adrian Buchmann, there’s more to it than that.

“This doesn’t always come across in photographs,” he says, “but you can immediately tell the difference between steel and titanium when you wear or hold a watch. Titanium is a much warmer metal. Steel is very cold, and the reflections it gives off have a blue tinge; with titanium they’re more yellow, green, even red. Polished titanium doesn’t shine as brightly as polished steel either, and

has something of a technical, endurance feel to it. I’ve always liked it, and generally find it more welcoming than steel.”

Though titanium is a more expensive material anyway, a secondary reason why titanium watches are at such a premium over steel is that the manufacturing process is quite different.

“Because it has a lower friction point, you have to take everything much slower,” Adrian says. “If a drill is used at too high a setting, say, the metal will actually start to burn. This means our machining time is always longer – but the results, I think, are well worth it.”

Some will consider the new colour scheme as one of the most significant changes for this new version, but that’s not actually something that feels especially new to everybody on the CW team.

After all, when the finishing touches were being put to last year’s Elite LE, two prototypes were made up: one in blue and one in, yes, black and red.

“Although in 2019 we decided the blue version was a bit more unusual and striking,” Adrian says, “we always liked the black too. Now that we get to expand the collection, it’s great to be able to share this look with everyone.”

Perhaps not immediately noticeable is that subtle differences between the two versions extend beyond the colours

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on the dial: for instance, the black has a brushed ceramic bezel, rather than the established polished version of the blue.

“I think the brushed bezel makes it feel like more of a tool watch, especially when paired with the titanium bracelet,” Adrian says. “With a shiny bezel the watch looks more dressy and classy, so this offers a sportier, more rugged alternative. You can actually give ceramic any surface you like, simply by brushing it with diamond powder – diamond being, of course, the only thing that’s hard enough to scratch ceramic.”

The C60 Elite 1000, then, is quite a watch – and surely one of the most significant value propositions in all horology. Though it looks only subtly different to its Limited Edition forebear, it’s improved in significant ways – not least in that it now offers far more options, in terms of colour and strap-bracelet choices. And the fact that you can buy a beautifully designed, titanium, 1000M rated dive watch for as little as £1,250 remains nothing less than remarkable.

The C60 Elite 1000 is now available, from £1,250

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Lepidoptera love

C1 Moonglow “In the world of haute horology, a handful of makers have done intriguing things, but in the realm of the affordable watch, only Christopher Ward has tackled this challenge.�

Worn & Wound

christopherward.co.uk

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People have long obsessed over butterflies, inspiring poets from Frost to Kipling, Wordsworth to Dickinson. But in these years of dramatic climate change and crippled ecosystems, they’re also one of our best environmental bellwethers too…

Butterflies are, quite simply, incredible things. Imagine flying from Africa to Britain on such breakable, fluttering wings. Impossible, right? Yet many butterflies do.

Perhaps it’s this mixture of the incredibly delicate and the immensely successful, the gorgeous colours and the intriguing lifecycles, that has fascinated mankind for centuries. To the ancient Romans and Greeks, a lone butterfly was the personification of a human soul – and to the Japanese, a swarm of them was a terrible omen. In art, they’re carved into centuries old Mayan temples – often a symbol of war, of all things – and crop up endlessly across the canon of European art, from Salvador Dali to the Renaissance greats, most recently being forced to live or die, somewhat cruelly, in glass boxes for blockbuster Damien Hirst installations at Tate Modern.

In Victorian times, butterfly collecting was a mainstream hobby – less violent than fox hunting, so perfect for small boys or the clergy – and century-old collections of pinned, dead butterflies still have scientific utility, even if they today look queasily macabre. These days, Hirst aside, we tend to treat them with more respect – and well we should. After all, alongside their sheer visual delight – not to be underestimated – they act as a hugely important bellwether for the health of our struggling eco-system.

And why? Mostly it’s because we like them so much.

“There are an awful lot of insect species out there, so we could never monitor them all,” says Dr Nigel Bourn, director of science at the UK charity Butterfly Conservation, which runs the world’s largest butterfly and moth recording schemes, and enjoys such luminaries as Sir David Attenborough as President and Chris Packham and Alan Titchmarsh as Vice-Presidents.

“But if we follow the fortunes of butterflies – which people enjoy, and which are very colourful, noticeable creatures – we get a good idea about what’s happening elsewhere too. Like so many insects, their annual lifecycle means they respond very quickly to change – which is why they’re such a good early indicator of all sorts of problems with the environment.”

It’s because people enjoy looking at butterflies that we have over 40 years of solid UK data, and from that we can see how the entire insect world is in trouble.

“Some insects may be declining faster than the butterflies, and others more

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slowly – indeed, there’s a big difference between different species of butterflies themselves – but the overall trends are the same. I can hardly think of a single species of insect that’s actually doing well.”

In terms of the butterflies, for instance, three quarters of our 59 species are now in a worse state than they were in the 1970s, when serious monitoring started. And it seems likely that the decades before that – the ‘50s and 60s, when agricultural intensification got serious – were more murderous even than that. Two major villains are easily identified: the pesticides we’ve been pouring into the environment for decades, and the more recent threat of climate change.

While a small proportion of the more generalist species – including many of the colourful garden butterflies – are coping reasonably well with the warmer summers and increased rainfall, many more are not.

“For instance, the Painted Lady did well this year,” Nigel says, “but that’s an unusual example in that it cannot actually breed in our climate, and instead is a migrant from Sub-Saharan Africa; over several generations, each flying hundreds of miles then laying its eggs, they come to the UK as a sort of relay team, then – as far as we know – the final generation flies the 3,000km back to Africa in one go. Generally, the larger, flashy butterflies had a decent time in 2019, though – overall – the likes of the Peacock have declined over 30% in the last 40 years. And the Small White and Large White – the ones we tend to call ‘Cabbage Whites’ – just had a dreadful year.”

“They respond very quickly to change – which is why they’re such a good early indicator of all sorts of problems with the environment”

Macro close up of a Monarch butterfly wing

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“The easiest way to make your garden more butterfly friendly is to turn your lawn into a meadow by mowing only two or three times a year"

There are 59 breeding species of butterfly in the UK, as well as over 2,500 species of their generally dowdier, usually nighttime dwelling cousin, the moth – Butterfly Conservation deals with both, but finds getting people enthused about moths is a tougher ask.

“The problem is,” Nigel says, “of those thousands of moth species, four are pests, coming into our houses and eating the natural fibres in our clothes. But people are starting to realise it’s only a small minority – and if we can get young kids to experience a moth trap, and so see the larger species up close, they're usually pretty wowed. The differences between butterflies and moths are actually minor and largely arbitrary, almost a human construct. The truth is that plenty of gorgeous, multicoloured moths fly during the day and, whisper it, there are one or two butterflies species that are rather dull too.”

Nigel first got interested in butterflies as an eight year old, feeding up Large White caterpillars in jam jars and releasing them as butterflies, this leading to a career in conservation. Three months at Butterfly Conservation were extended to two years, and then another two, and now he’s been there 24 years – “my life’s work, and I don’t regret a minute of it” – with the charity now almost 100 employees strong.

“The easiest way to make your garden more butterfly friendly,” he says, “is to turn your lawn into a meadow by mowing only two or three times a year; cutting out the use of peat, pesticides and fertilisers; and planting nectar-rich wild flowers, lavender and buddleja, which is always full of butterflies. And if you want them breeding in your garden, plant food that caterpillars like – bird’s-foot-trefoil is especially good. You’ll get the likes of Common Blues in no time.”

Though he tries not to have favourites, Nigel admits that there are a few species that he’s always more glad to see than others after a long, hard winter. “The incredibly delicate White Admiral is a black-and-white woodland species that flies like a tropical butterfly, and will just sit there on your shoulder,” he says. “I find

them stunning. But I’m not averse to the showy red-and-black of the Red Admiral, or the bright spots of the Burnet moth, a warning colouration that says, look at me but don’t try to eat me, I’m full of poisons.

This said, they've all got something going for them, and when you delve into their life cycles there are amazing stories.”

So what’s the future for butterflies – and our environment in general? “It might not always sound like it, but I’m generally an optimist,” Nigel says. “Although climate change is unstoppable, we can and should make sure that the worst case scenarios are avoided. That’s not beyond our capabilities; and it’s not outside our intelligence to create a farming system that works with nature, not against it, either.

The way younger people are pushing the environment up the political agenda is a cause for optimism, I feel – the challenges we face are greater than most people realise, but you have to take some hope.”

Join Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count in late July; www.butterfly-conservation.org

A spectacular but controversial piece from Damien Hirst's Mandalas show at the White Cube, London

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Here’s what you need for the Big Butterfly Count…

Electric boogaloo

Electric vehicles

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Is the internal combustion engine really on its last legs? And, just as importantly, are electric cars definitely what’s going to replace them?

The jury’s very much out – but everyone’s betting on the outcome nonetheless

Electric cars are the future – or so the auto industry, for once talking with one voice, would have us believe. Everyone’s making them – or talking about making them – and they’re undeniably improving at quite a clip. Plus, the upsides are obvious: while you can’t get rid of wind or road noise entirely, electric vehicles – or EVs – are almost supernaturally quiet, produce zero emissions, and offer immediate power on tap, making the driving experience subtly (but notably) different to that with a conventional car.

For the right person, with the right usage, they’re starting to make sound financial sense too: after all, you don’t have to pay road tax, you get to dodge the London Congestion Charge – and similar schemes in other cities – and you even get a government grant to help buy one. They’re rapidly becoming a viable alternative to petrol and diesel cars – if not for mile-eating holidays, at least on daily commuter trips. Plus, with the right audience, you get endless cool points for driving one.

Of course, problems remain. With each new generation, the range between charges increases, charging itself becomes quicker, and the charging infrastructure improves – but none of that’s happening as quickly as many of us would like. When they first appeared about a decade ago, your typical electric car cost one-and-ahalf times as much as a comparable petrol model, and would do less than 100 miles.

Today they still command a premium price, if not quite such a dramatic one, which becomes even less important once you take into consideration the lower running costs and the government purchase initiative; meanwhile, real world range – while still limiting – has more than doubled.

There are other trends too. One is that electric cars are becoming more, well, normal. Yes, some continue to make a big point of looking futuristic – like refugees from some new remake of Tron – and it’s hard to imagine most Teslas (smooth, flatfish-looking things with such oddball design elements as gullwing doors) ever looking normal. But the new trend is for electric cars that look determinedly non-special.

Renault’s Zoe electric hatch, now in its third generation, is closer than ever to the same company’s conventionally powered Clio; Audi’s all-electric e-tron SUV is bigger than a Q5, not quite as big as a Q7, but looks of-a-piece with both of them; and Volkswagen’s e-Golf looks just like, well, a Golf.

The biggest day-to-day issues remain to do with range and recharging times. Right now, 245 miles is the new gold standard.

The Renault and Audi above manage

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about that; so do the Nissan Leaf and Kia e-Niro/Hyundai Kona twins. But as many are finding, theoretical ability and real-world range aren’t the same thing.

Having spent some time with a few all-electric cars recently, however, the experience has largely been very pleasant.

EV drivers tend to be a friendly, well-informed and helpful bunch, often happy to go out of their way to chat, help or advise.

At times driving electric actually makes you feel good about people, serving as something of a reminder that we’re all in this – ‘this’ being life, conserving the planet, whatever you like – together.

But that’s an experience largely revolving around the day-to-day commute.

Longer trips – London to Scotland, say – are more of a worry, and you certainly have to plan ahead. Imagine: you’ve got hardly any juice left, you just about manage to find a charger, and it’s either out of use or occupied. You’re scuppered, basically – and anecdotal evidence has this happening all too often. Apps that tell you where chargers are – and, crucially, how fast they charge and whether they’re working – soon become your new best friends. The UK’s current patchwork of

The more electric cars there are, the more normal they become – in performance, and in the way they look

"We’re all in this – ‘this’ being life, conserving the planet, whatever you like – together"

providers – there are over 50 out there – needs to start working better together pronto. (If something’s baffling or uncertain, people won’t leap aboard to try it.)

Get past that hurdle, though, and cutting the petrol station forecourt out of your life actually becomes something of a pleasure. Once you’ve been driving electric for a bit, you suddenly realise what messy, dirty places they are – and how much time and money you spend at them. Remembering to plug in each time you get home becomes very much the lesser of two evils.

So we’ll all be driving them soon, right?

Not so fast! Though they’ll get cheaper, they won’t get much cheaper any time soon, and that’s largely because battery prices won’t reduce for at least five years – and batteries remain the most expensive component of most EVs. Lithium batteries have become the new gold rush, but we’ll simply run out of the stuff before we can build all the electric cars we want to.

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A suitable case for treatment?

Will electric power suit Morgan, that quirkiest and coolest of car makers? They seem to think so…

But what else might make for a good alternative? Some argue for propane, or solar, or steam or – most often – hydrogen fuel cells, so promising and so far away.

And there are other ideas too. To find out what might work best, we caught up with one of CW's favourite car makers, Morgan, who've got an EV in their future too…

So, is electric the only game in town as regards alternate car power sources?

At the Morgan Motor Company – maker of famous traditional sport cars built using the most artisanal of construction methods – they’re getting quite excited about the possibilities.

“There are currently a number of alternative methods of propulsion being explored by the wider industry,” says Morgan’s head of marketing, Toby Blythe, “hydrogen being one of those. Our hydrogen fuel cell concept car, the LIFECar, was a project we undertook in 2009. It was a starting point for Morgan, and we’ve been on an interesting journey of exploring alternative methods of propulsion ever since.”

One of the most exciting and practical of those alternative methods is, of course, electric, and Morgan’s most recent concept – the EV3, based on the Morgan 3 Wheeler – has generated plenty of interest.

“An exciting and radical study, this vehicle demonstrated how it was possible to design and build an electric Morgan that retained its low weight, was hand crafted using our core materials, and remained exciting to drive,” Toby says. “As a niche manufacturer, we are aware that Morgan must to some degree remain a follower rather than a leader with regards to EV and other advanced technology, but I think we also demonstrated how we could make it work for us.”

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The big challenge for a company like Morgan, of course, is to combine modern tech with the company’s almost uniquely traditional manufacturing methods.

“Electric is incredibly exciting for a company like ours,” Toby says, “and whilst we remain committed to our core craft skills, we’ve also been keen to embrace modern technology to continually enhance our offering. Electrification is one such example, and we view it as an opportunity to create a product that is genuinely unique within the marketplace, further mixing craftsmanship and technology.”

So what place does the internal combustion engine have in our future?

“The wider automotive industry, governments and consumer demand will decide that,” Toby says. “What we can make sure of, however, is that the Morgan Motor Company is agile and versatile enough to react and adapt in any direction demanded of us. What’s important is ensuring that our business will continue to produce hand-crafted sports cars in another 110 years’ time.”

For more, www.morgan-motor.co.uk

The JJ Calibres

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It was through the innovative work of master watchmaker Johannes Jahnke that Christopher Ward first signalled what a bold disruptor it was going to be, developing its own inhouse complications to offer high-end watchmaking to a wider audience than ever before. Here the people behind the four JJ Calibres retell their story, and hint at an exciting future…

Christopher Ward has come a long way in a short amount of time, but one of the biggest leaps it’s taken – more so even than the launch of Calibre SH21, its own in-house movement – was with the arrival of the JJ Calibres. This series of modules, designed to piggyback on existing movements from ETA or Sellita, brought complications more often associated with the most high-end watches to a far wider audience. “They were, you could say, our very first forays into the world of ‘serious watchmaking’,” says CW co-founder Mike France.

There are four JJ Calibres so far: JJ01, a jumping hour module currently temporarily retired; JJ02, a single pusher chronograph, which will soon be permanently retired as a slim store of vital components is running very low; JJ03, a worldtimer, released in two distinctly different versions; and JJ04, a moonphase, the current star performer – if you’ll excuse the pun – with exciting devel-

£1,000, expensive for us at the time. At the same time, we were just so taken by the cleverness of what he was doing.”

opments ahead of it. All were developed

by Johannes Jahnke, Christopher Ward’s master watchmaker for many years, now working as director of development at movement manufacturer Sellita.

Johannes was already with Synergies Horlogères when that company – a small Biel-based watch developer, founded by Jörg Bader Snr, now head of the CW atelier in Biel – first became a major supplier to CW in 2008. In the background, Johannes had been working on what would become the first JJ Calibre, JJ01, which would offer a jumping hour complication generally only found on expensive and specialist pieces from the likes of Audemars Piguet and A. Lange & Söhne. With a jumping hour, there’s no hour hand sweeping around the dial every 12 hours, but instead the hour is indicated by a disc viewed through a window in the dial; it’s a style that delights some and confuses others.

“Johannes’ jumping hour complication already existed, and he was working on his single pusher chronograph too, but nobody was taking them up,” Mike says.

“But when they first came to our attention, we became really excited. Getting involved with their further development seemed exciting – but we did shy a bit at the implications. After all, we knew we’d have to sell the resulting watches at over 34

“The starting point for each of what became the JJ Calibres was usually a car ride,” remembers Jörg, who oversaw their development. “They shut Johannes and I off from the outside world, and we loved to dream. Johannes has such a 3D understanding of things that he could practically figure out, while driving the car, if an idea would function or not. We decided that what we needed to do was come up with small but powerful horological solutions based on existing movements.

The results might or might not be unique, but they’d definitely be far ahead of the competition at Christopher Ward’s price point. You could call it disruptive, as usually watchmaking of this type uses base movements unattainable by most aficionados.”

“Each of the JJs is unique in the way it tries to solve a particular watchmaking issue,” says Peter Ellis, another CW co-founder. “The really clever thing about Johannes is the way he comes up with insightful, and often not very complicated, solutions to difficult problems. None of the JJs has been created from the perspective of adding cost for the sake of it – quite the opposite – but instead to be affordable yet commercially viable. JJ01, it seems to me, is an especially adroit piece of watchmaking.”

Mike, meanwhile, puts Johannes’ approach down to his East German background, which brings with it a love of utility.

“It means the way he goes about his horological problem solving really chimed with our own approach,” Mike says. “It’s always elegant, never over-egged. We always felt what he was doing was right for us, and he likewise found in us a brand 35

Johannes was the driving force behind the JJs, but he didn’t do it alone. Indeed, much of his work on JJ02 was done in conjunction with a famous watchmaker called Jean Fillon, then in his 80s. When they first met, Jean had been working on a single pusher but was unable to complete it, so Johannes took the project on.

“JJ02, to my mind, is still probably our finest horological achievement,” Peter says. “Johannes’ great innovation was to invert the single pusher element of it, so you could see what was happening when

you pressed the pusher. Sadly, though, the remaining parts we’d taken from Jean were so few in number that the ME109 will be the last of our single pusher chronographs.”

Sometimes, of course, an innovative complication isn’t exactly what the market wants, and so it was with JJ03, the worldtimer, which exists in two distinct versions: the very clever original, in which everything was presented on a 24 hour basis, and the most recent, more conventional (and far more successful) 12 hour version.

“It perhaps proves,” Mike says, “that being brilliant isn’t always enough, if you don’t bring your audience with you.”

And then there’s the moonphase module, JJ04, which came about because the CW co-founders specifically wanted one – “when we’d get together with fans and

Calibre JJ02, found in the C9 Me 109 Monopusher Chronograph

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customers, it’s the one complication they’d always ask us for,” Peter remembers. The problem was, most moonphase watches on the market were unforgivably dull.

“They tended to look quite old fashioned, with very small moons, and we couldn’t get excited about them,” Mike says. “Then one day we were chatting with Johannes, and we all came up with the idea of making the aperture much bigger than usual, so the moon became the hero of the watch, rather than just a subsidiary element. The moon would track smoothly with the passage of the real thing, rather than jerking at points as every other moonphase does – and if you keep it wound, it’s accurate to 128 years.”

It was a brilliant idea from the start, shown off to greater effect than ever by the current C1 Moonglow, a radical reinterpretation of the traditional moonphase watch made possible by a further modification of JJ04, created by Christopher Ward’s technical director, Frank Stelzer. A technician with particularly strong chronograph knowledge, Frank had joined SH back when Johannes was working on SH21, and actually did a lot of the behind-thescenes work on the JJs. His more recent JJ04 modification has been such a roaring success that further watches featuring that module are very much on the cards.

“We’re definitely not finished with the JJs,” Jörg says. “Frank has perfected the manufacturing procedure for the existing ones, and actually functions, in many ways, just like Johannes did years ago – though now it’s often him and Jörg Bader Jnr, my son, talking about and planning things, rather than Johannes and I, as it was back in the old days.”

The grand four

prepared to support his ‘riskier’ developments and give them a voice. I remember him saying he wanted to board a plane, walk down the aisle, and see Christopher Wards on wrist after wrist.”

JJ01 Jumping Hour

JJ02 Single Pusher Chrono

Modification to ETA 2824-2 & SW-200 Automatic, 40 hour power reserve Used in: C1 Grand Malvern Jumping Hour; assorted C9 Jumping Hours, in both 40mm and 43mm sizes

Modification to ETA 6497 Manual, 40 hour power reserve Used in: C900 Harrison Single Pusher Chronograph; C9 Single Pusher Chronograph; C9 Me 109 SPC

While most jumping hour watches release the power held in the mainspring unevenly, because of the surge required to move the hour disc forward every 60 minutes, Johannes evened this out by taking power from the central minutes wheel. The outcome? ‘Jumps’ that are a lot smoother.

Johannes worked with Jean Fillon to rework this ETA movement’s chronograph function through a new main plate, bridges, winding mechanism and centre wheel. The result: both a continuous seconds sub-dial and a 30-minute totaliser operated through a single pusher in the crown.

JJ03 Worldtimer

JJ04 Moonphase

Modification to ETA 2893 Automatic, 38 hour power reserve Used in: C9 Worldtimer; C1 Grand Malvern Worldtimer

Modification to ETA 2836-2/SW220 Automatic, 38 hour power reserve Used in: C1 Grand Malvern Moonphase; C9 Moonphase; C1 Moonglow

Based upon the watch industry's go-to automatic GMT calibre, Calibre JJ03 exits in two versions: the first featured airport destinations as a second time zone and paired that with an hour hand that took 24 hours to complete a revolution, while the second swapped that gearing system for a simpler approach, reverting to 12-hour timing.

This JJ Calibre uses ETA’s 2836-2 as a base but strips out the date wheel, replacing it with four further wheels to drive the moon disc, and two more required for the setting mechanism. This results in the smooth perpetual motion of the moon – two of them, in fact – rather than the more usual one-day progression.

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History is full of hissy fits, some of them lethally dangerous. Sultan Mustafa I of the Ottoman Empire would run around his Constantinople palace knocking off his viziers’ turbans, then daring them to do anything about it; Peter the Great of Russia would snip off his nobles’ beards himself, then force them to wear ‘modern’ western clothes on fear of execution; and King Charles VI of France suffered such homicidal seizures

that he once accidentally killed four of his unsuspecting companions on a hunting trip.

Our list of the great and not-so-good throwing their toys out of the prams contains kings and singers, sportspeople and actors – lots and lots of actors – and some of their tizzies are petrifying, others merely laughable. None of them, however, sound much fun to be around…

For some in the public eye, life is the most unruly of playgrounds, a world of narcissistic rages, unexplained wobblies, and emotional outbursts...

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Gaius Caligula Where? Ancient Rome When? AD 12-41

Queen Ranavalona I Where? Madagascar When? 1828-1861

History is awash with eccentric, outlandish rulers, but perhaps the most frighteningly unstable of all was the Roman Emperor Gaius Caligula – maybe the worst boss this city state ever had (and it enjoyed some shockers) – who seems to have made it his mission to arbitrarily humiliate and intimidate everyone around him, from the senators and generals in his immediate vicinity to great swathes of pious citizens, who he offended by declaring himself a god.

Constantly afraid of hissy fits that could turn lethal at any moment, leading Roman lights kept as low a profile as possible, but even so, many were randomly arrested for treason – those who dared to mention goats, which Caligula hated, were especially at risk.

They also had to indulge his most bizarre whims on pain of brutal punishment: one time he had his army build him a two-mile long floating bridge just so he could gallop along it on his horse; later he built that same beast, Incitatus, a lavish house, and appointed it to the office of consul (though Caligula was assassinated before this arrangement could go through).

There’s something to be admired about a monarch that managed to keep her country – Madagascar, the island nation 250 miles off Africa – out of both British and French hands during the glory years of the European empires, but it becomes less impressive when you see how she did it. Queen Ranavalona maintained her control through a regime so ruthless that the population halved during her reign.

Instead of tax, the people were forced into hard labour, and an estimated 10,000 died building a new road in front of her so the court could enjoy a buffalo hunt in comfort. Most notoriously, her paranoia at plots against her saw her instigate the notorious, and difficult to survive, tangena ordeal: during endless deadly hissy fits she’d force those she was suspicious of to eat three pieces of chicken skin before swallowing the poisonous tangena nut. Either they’d die from the poison or vomit everything up – and if anything less than three pieces of skin was found in their sick, they’d be executed right away. This accounted for about 3,000 deaths a year during her rule.

Nero Where? Ancient Rome When? AD 37-68 Emperor Nero probably wasn’t quite as mad as his legend has it – instead of “fiddling while Rome burns”, as the saying goes, the most solid reports have him directing the firefighting response as fire raged through the city, destroying 70% of it – but he was a decidedly vain, ruthless and unusual ruler. (When the fires finally went out, he rudely built himself a huge golden palace in the middle of the resulting wasteland.)

At first considered a relatively safe, stable pair of hands – especially after the weak, paranoid, drunken Claudius – he may have lacked battlefield prowess, but was hardly above a bit of murder: he arranged for the killings of his mother, his brother, and one of his three wives (a second he kicked to death himself).

One famous hissy fit saw him introduce poetry to the Olympic Games – an event no-one dared tell him he hadn't won.

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Frank Sinatra Where? Sands Hotel, Las Vegas When? 1967 Many of the greatest Hollywood stars of the classic era were on the shortest of short fuses, and few more so than Old Blue Eyes; though admirable in many ways (he was highly generous, and would rarely let anyone around him get away with a racist remark), few could predict what would send his hair-trigger ‘Sicilian temper’ (as he called it) into full-on tantrum mode. Many of his outbursts were witnessed by the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, which in the 1950s had become home base to Frank and his Rat Pack.

One morning he’s said to have walked into his office there and launched into a fit of screaming and swearing, breaking windows, ripping the telephone out of the wall and setting fire to the room. What was wrong? It turned out the offending phone clashed with his new orange sweater. Later, when Howard Hughes bought the Sands in ’67, Sinatra’s casino credit was cut off, so he left for rival hotel Caesar’s Palace, but not before screaming, climbing on tables, throwing chairs – and driving a golf cart through the window.

Eric Cantona Where? Selhurst Park Stadium, Croydon When? 1995

Klaus Kinski Where? Everywhere When? Often

Elton John Where? The Inn on the Park, London When? The late ’70s Perhaps the most famous tantrum-thrower of them all, Reggie Dwight (as he was) is still capable of kicking off on occasion, but his heyday was in the 1970s and ’80s. Perhaps the most celebrated of his “unrealistic moments” happened at the London hotel that’s now known as the Four Seasons. Elton had been up all night when something started to get to him. Keen for somebody to shriek at, he phoned a flunky and gave them both barrels.

But what was wrong? They couldn’t work it out, until Elton eventually explained.

“It's too windy outside,” he blasted, “and I want something done about it!”

The great German poet-actor Klaus Kinski always had a hair-trigger temper, with many (though still a small proportion) of his outbursts actually on record, having been filmed by the famous director Werner Herzog for his documentary, My Best Fiend. One time, on a Peruvian jungle set, the indigenous film extras actually offered to kill Kinski for Herzog, so sick were they of his temper.

Other incidents are harder to pin down, so vague was Kinski about places and dates, but he apparently once tried to burn down a theatre mid-performance because he felt the audience weren't appreciative enough, and another time – when a critic told him his acting was outstanding and extraordinary – threw hot potatoes and bits of cutlery in his face, screaming, "I was not outstanding, I was not extraordinary. I was monumental! I was epochal!”

Tyra Banks Where? Los Angeles, California When? 2005

John McEnroe Where? Wimbledon When? 1981 Every now and then, the All-England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club’s Wimbledon tournament – normally one of the most civilised events on the sporting calendar – descends into bad-tempered meltdown.

The most famous occasion this happened was during a first-round match between ‘Superbrat’ John McEnroe and the largely forgotten Tom Gullikson in 1981.

Frustrated over a line-call, McEnroe grew increasingly irate with umpire Edward James, shouting “You cannot be serious” and calling him “The absolute pits of the world.” McEnroe was later fined for his outburst, but went on to win his match, and later the whole tournament.

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Eric Cantona, the talismanic and endlessly temperamental Frenchman who inspired Manchester United to four Premier League titles in the mid1990s, had the shortest of tempers, punching a teammate at French team Auxerre, throwing his boots at another at Montpellier, chucking the ball at a referee (and then calling each member of the disciplinary committee in turn an “idiot”) at Nîmes – and all this before he came to England. At Manchester United he was an immediate hit, reinvigorating a struggling squad, but on 25 January 1995 the incident he’ll be best remembered for ‘kicked off’. During an away match against Crystal Palace he was sent off late in the game, then was taunted by a Palace fan on his way to the tunnel.

Matthew Simmons had run down 11 rows of stairs to shout abuse at Cantona, which ‘King Eric’ responded to by launching a kung fu-style flying kick into the crowd. He was suspended for the remainder of the season, fined £30,000, and sentenced to 120 hours community service.

The Bee Gees Where? BBC Television Centre, London When? 1997 Amongst the prime locations for a hissy fit are TV’s panel shows and chat shows, which guests – musicians, especially – are always walking off for one reason or other. Preston, singer with the Ordinary Boys, famously left Never Mind the Buzzcocks midshow, irritated by attacks on his wife; what’s rarely remembered is that both Huey Morgan of Fun Lovin’ Criminals and Lemmy from Motorhead did the same.

But it was on BBC1’s Clive Anderson All Talk in 1996 that the most notorious incident took place. Throughout an interview with The Bee Gees, the typically smirking host repeatedly joked about the band’s Saturday Night Fever songbook and responded to the news that the band had once considered the name ‘Les Tosseurs’ with “You'll always be tossers to me”.

Barry Gibb walked out first, followed by his brothers Robin and – after a short delay – Maurice.

Reality TV is the natural home of the hissy fit, with on-air fights, walk-outs and confrontations a regular occurrence, but it’s hard to know how genuine they all are. The hissy fits that drove 22 seasons of ex-model Tyra Banks’ dubiously-empowering reality competition show, America's Next Top Model, seem painfully real, however. One poor contestant, pushed into a ‘villain’ role by the show’s apparently deliberate and disingenuous format, received both barrels from a screaming, finger-pointing Tyra: “I have never in my life yelled at a girl like this! When my mother yells like this it’s because she loves me. I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you! How dare you! Learn something from this! When you go to bed at night, you lay there and you take responsibility for yourself…” And so it went on. (The recipient’s crime?

It mainly revolved around that fact that she’d been unwise enough to smile.)

Russell Crowe Where? Mercer Street Hotel, New York When? 2005 Many of our most charismatic movie stars have notoriously short tempers, but perhaps the most unpredictable is Gladiator hero Russell Crowe. Long before becoming internationally famous, he was fighting at hotels in Sydney’s Coffs Harbour (“he thinks the world revolves around Russell Crowe,” one combatant is heard to say on the videotape of an altercation), and later on he brought similar behaviour to a London Japanese restaurant – reportedly it was EastEnders star Ross Kemp who broke up that fight. Most notoriously, he blew up when he found himself unable to call home from a Manhattan hotel room in 2005. Rushing downstairs to reception, he threw a lobby telephone at the concierge, causing “a laceration and severe pain”.

He was reportedly sued for $11m, but ended up settling out of court.

Alec Baldwin Where? New York When? 2007 Famously liberal, oft-hilarious Alec Baldwin seems constantly to be shouting at or punching people.

He’s popped or pushed paparazzi photographers in 1995, 2012, 2013 and 2016; he was kicked off a flight after a confrontation over a Scrabble-like mobile phone game turned into a swearing, loo door-slamming battle; and had a set-to with NYC officers after riding his bicycle the wrong way down Fifth Avenue. His Twitter fights are legend too. Perhaps most shocking of all was his 2007 voicemail, packed with insults thrown at ex-wife Kim Bassinger, in which he calls their then-11 year old daughter, Ireland, a “rude, thoughtless little pig”. Happily this last one, at least, seems to have caused no lasting damage to the father-daughter relationship, and the two staged a photo – eight years later – of them reading a book called If I Were a Pig... together.

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Christian Bale Where? New Mexico When? 2009

Naomi Campbell Where? Australia When? 2010

Perhaps the most irritating celebrities are those who take themselves too seriously. Although more recent Johnny Depp confrontations have been somewhat less charming, we still smile at his oddball excuse for smashing up a hotel room in 1994 – “a dog, a rat, an armadillo and a cockroach the size of a baseball” did it, apparently.

One it’s hard to smile at, though, is the relentless tirade 2009 Christian Bale launched against a hapless director of photography on the set of Terminator Salvation. Shane Hurlbut had wandered into Bale’s eyeline by mistake, promoting an expletive-laden rant. “Do you want me to go trash your lights? Then why are you trashing my scene? You do it one more time and I ain’t walking on this set if you’re still hired.

I’m serious…” Naturally, numerous choice words have been removed.

The British model – one of the five so-called ‘Original Supermodels’ of the early ’90s, alongside Cindy Crawford et al – is the modern queen of the hissy fit: no stranger to an anger management course, she's been convicted of assault on four occasions (and has been accused of attacking employees and friends on many other occasions).

Kicking, spitting and throwing things have been her main modus operandi: a phone in 1998, a BlackBerry in 2006, a broken high heel in a TV commercial spoofing both. One 2010 tantrum over having to share a lift with other guests at an event in Australia – she ran back to her room and refused to come out to do a catwalk show – went global, but 2010 was a bad year for her in general: she was also said to have bashed her chauffeur's head into the steering wheel for refusing to dish any dirt on her Russian boyfriend of the time, Vlad.

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Famous wearers bring glamour to certain watches – and massively increase interest. How else can we explain the almost $18m paid for actor Paul Newman’s old Rolex Daytona a couple of years ago?

Might the same be about to happen with the timeonly Rolex Cellini, a little loved dress watch that most people forget about – but which has recently had an unexpected injection of glamour through the patronage of the 44th President of United States, Barack Obama?

In office, Obama was the opposite of flashy. As a senator he’d worn a Tag Heuer 1500 two-tone diver’s watch, and he’d sometimes rock a Fitbit Surge, but as President he was mostly seen with his 41mm Jorg Gray chronograph, a birthday present from his Secret Service detail after he’d admired one worn by an agent. Costing $300 or so, it sported a Japanese Miyota Calibre OS-20 movement and the Secret Service emblem just above the 12 o’clock marker.

These days, though, he too is revealed to be a Rolex man – though, for those who’d been watching closely, there’d been hints to his fandom all along. In a 2014 ‘Bring a Loupe’ feature on the website Hodinkee, Obama was reported as trying on and being impressed by a vintage Rolex Bubbleback in a shop called Cool Vintage Watches in Parkville, Missouri – quite why he didn’t buy it isn’t clear.

By Obama’s standards, his current white gold, white dial Cellini is an expensive watch, by far the poshest he’s ever been seen with – Reference 50509, it retails at around $15,000 – but by Rolex standards, not so much. (A white gold Day-Date, for instance, is over $8,000 more.) Very much a dress watch, this 39mm piece is named for Italian poet, musician, soldier, artist and – especially – sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, a true Renaissance man whose bronze piece Perseus with the Head of Medusa is one of the great treasures of Florence. Obama seems as happy wearing it with jeans and casual shirts as he is with suits, and was seen with his Cellini at Prince Harry’s Invicta Games in 2017, and in the huge official portrait now hanging in the Smithsonian Institute’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Painted

by Nigerian-American artist Kehinde Wiley, it’s a striking piece, showing Obama sitting on an antique wooden chair surrounded by flowering greenery – almost as if he’s part of the hedge. The Cellini pokes out from under his cuff, half-hidden but rendered in such detail it’s unmistakable.

So might this watch gain Newmanlike levels of appreciation, now it has a famous advocate of its own? To be honest – and though stranger things have happened – it seems unlikely in a world that loves steel sports watches above all else, and for now the Cellini remains Rolex’s least well-known line.

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This changes everything‌

head

to to

head

to to

Head Head-to-head

Christopher Ward’s quick-release technology for watch straps makes switching leather for bracelet easier than it’s ever been. But how best to take advantage? We got Mike France, Adrian Buchmann and special guest Zach Weiss – of top American watch site Worn and Wound – together to talk straps

Just as you can change the entire tone of an outfit by wearing it with different shoes – the same jeans with brown brogues or white tennis shoes tells two very different stories – so a new watch strap impacts not only the timepiece itself, but often the entire look of its wearer. Take this issue’s coverstar, the new series edition of the C60 Elite 1000: it suggests a very different mood on its sleek titanium bracelet than it does on, say, an all-action rubber/Cordura® strap.

Put it on brown leather or a bright orange NATO and it would be different again.

Since straps and bracelets take up such a large proportion of real estate on your wrist – they’re often more noticeable than the watch itself at a distance – it’s perhaps surprising that we don’t change our straps more often. But no. Traditionally you needed specialist tools to do so, and risked scratching the lugs or back of your case in the process. This being the case, most of us tended to wear a strap until it fell apart, then took it along to a jeweller to be replaced – with an identical one.

Thanks to quick-release technology, though – in part pioneered by Christopher Ward, but increasingly taken up by others in the industry – everything has changed. Now there’s the easy opportunity to change your strap far more often; daily, if you feel like it. It opens up a whole world of fun, and it’s

one we intend to jump into with both feet.

To that end, we put a series of questions to CW co-founder Mike France, head of product design Adrian Buchmann and a special guest star – Zach Weiss, Executive Editor/Creative Director at New York’s Worn and Wound – to map out the current lie of the land. Not only a leading watch website, Worn and Wound also sells straps – lots and lots of straps – giving Zach an almost unique take on the matter.

First off, do people really care about the straps or bracelets a watch comes on, or is it very much an afterthought?

Zach Weiss: For those who are new to watches, the strap the watch comes on is part of the package and the only strap they’ll wear with it, thus very important.

Many don’t know a strap can be switched, or that third-party options are available.

For collectors and enthusiasts, however, I feel the strap is more of a bonus when picking a watch, not the deciding factor.

Mike France: People bring up straps at our Christopher Ward Get-Togethers and events all the time, and almost always like the idea that you can add a little bit of your own personality to a watch through your strap choices. The feeling that you can make a piece your own, customising it a little, is one of the great things about 46

watch ownership. My feeling is that this is going to grow and grow.

Rubber straps: a great choice, only for serious dive watches, or not at all?

Zach: Though I personally find rubber straps uncomfortable, for anyone who wears their watches in harsh environments rubber can be a great option. I once met a barber, for example, who said he can only wear rubber straps, as the various chemicals he comes into contact with at his shop destroy leather too fast.

Mike: I'm personally a big fan of our hybrid rubber/Cordura® straps, and wear them all the time; right now I’m wearing a C60 Trident Pro 600 on a hybrid, for instance.

Adrian Buchmann: I’m another one who finds most thick rubber straps a bit bulky – this tends to be more of a problem for those of us with slimmer wrists – so I’m really looking forward to a new range of hybrid straps we'll be offering in the second half of the year. The profile promises to be a little thinner, so more comfortable.

How about colours? What strap colours and material work best, in your view?

Adrian: A camel coloured leather strap would be my personal go-to.

Zach: You can’t go wrong with medium browns, brighter tans, medium to dark

greys, and, of course, black. Those are all very versatile and should work with most dial colours and case materials. For something more ‘out there’, I like heavy-nap suedes. They’re rugged and matte, and gain a lot of patina quickly.

Mike: I occasionally wear bracelets, but most of my watches are on leather or hybrid straps. We don’t want to offer hundreds of different strap options – it actually makes choosing what to buy harder.

However, there’s definitely an opportunity to develop the range.

How much are people willing to spend?

Mike: We sell good quality leather straps for £55-£110; hybrid, rubber and canvas webbing straps for £55-£75; and NATO straps for £35. That’s fair, I think. Over the next year you’ll be seeing some more adventurous options from us too.

Zach: If you’re putting a strap on a $5k+ watch, spending $150+ on it isn’t outrageous. That said, most people wear their straps pretty rigorously, using them every day, sweating in them during the summer and so on. Eventually, leather straps do get gross or breakdown, so many would rather spend a bit less, knowing they will have to replace the strap eventually.

Do any of you wear any watches on a NATO or similar nylon webbing strap?

Zach: Yes, once the weather gets warm, I turn to nylon – my preference being for our American-made ADPT Straps, naturally.

Walking around NYC, it’s impossible not to sweat a lot in high heat and humidity.

Mike: I'm not really a NATO guy, but we carried striped nylon straps in the early days of Christopher Ward, though they

were always slow sellers. I think things are changing now, though: for one thing, we have more watches – like the C60s, C65s and the Military Collection – that really suit them, and with quick-release the idea that you can easily change your strap for the summer (or just to suit your mood) makes the idea of a NATO much more appealing.

Why aren’t more people offering quick-release, then?

Adrian: The opportunities afforded by quick-release are immense. I can’t work out why more brands still aren’t doing it.

Mike: It seems a no brainer, doesn’t it? It takes less time, you don’t need a special tool, you don’t risk scratching anything. It’s a real plus.

Adrian: The aversion to it in parts of the Swiss watch industry seems to be down to the idea that quick-release is cheaper somehow. It’s deemed not luxurious enough for the really ‘serious players’. That makes no sense: how can something that’s better in every way be ‘less luxurious’ than something that’s annoying and contains inherent risks? It’s a very weird one.

Mike: I can only think that they want people to have to come back to the official store to change a strap each time. It gives them a chance to sit them down, give them a coffee, maybe a back massage – and sell them another watch!

Do you prefer a deployant clasp or a conventional buckle?

Zach: I think deployants are better in theory than in practice. While I like the idea of the clean look, they’re rarely comfortable and can be annoying to use. Conventional buckles might be simple, but they work.

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Finally, when a watch is on a bracelet, does it tend to stay on that bracelet, or would you ever consider swapping that for something else?

Zach: Bracelets are an interesting item. I often think that when you have the choice of a bracelet when buying new, you should take it – even if you don’t want to wear it.

They tend to hold the most value, as they last so long, and can even be iconic in their own right. That said, I prefer the way leather looks on watches. I find bracelet end-links often distract from the geometry of the lugs.

Mike: Many watches are defined by their bracelets, and it’s hard to imagine removing the bracelet from a TAG Heuer Link, say, and replacing it with something else. With other watches, though, why not? And especially when quick-release makes it so easy, and both bracelet and strap have been designed for the watch. Swapping between types makes your collection so much more versatile, after all – and it’s quite enjoyable.

And we’re all about encouraging people to have fun with their watches.

For more, windupwatchshop.com; www.wornandwound.com For the entire Christopher Ward range of straps, www.christopherward.co.uk/straps

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60 | 60 GUARANTEE

Timespan

138 years +

Perfect timing A watch, as a precision instrument with many moving parts, needs to be serviced regularly. Time between services depends upon the model; the climate, environment and conditions in which it is used; and the care taken by its owner. We recommend you service your Christopher Ward watch every 3-4 years.

Look at it like a trip to the dentist. You might take perfect care of your teeth, but problems can still arise over time. Taking the watch apart, re-oiling it and cleaning where necessary will prevent components from wearing.

Our 60|60 Guarantee covers the majority of watches returned for repair,

Gaudi’s masterpiece, the Basílica de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona, is a never-ending construction project. It’s taken seven times as long to build as the great pyramid at Giza, and it’s not finished yet…

Is Spain’s celebrated Basílica de la Sagrada Família – a huge Roman Catholic minor basilica in the centre of Barcelona – ever to be finished?

Many doubt it – though official estimates currently aim for 2026. Never intended to be an actual cathedral (although very much of cathedral size) it’s a jaw-dropping, otherworldly vision. In a universe where even the biggest skyscraper is completed within three or four years, its ongoing travails are as unbelievable as its ambition.

Construction began in March 1882, to a Neo-Gothic design by celebrated architect Francisco de Paula del Villar – but he resigned the following year. When Antoni Gaudi took over he changed everything – now it would be a unique combination of the Gothic and Art Nouveau styles, adding unprecedented influences from

but we can repair watches outside the guarantee at competitive prices too.

To ensure your timepiece keeps on ticking, do your research. christopherward.co.uk/watchservicing

the natural world, not least the shapes of vast trees and bones. Gaudi devoted his life to it, but when he died in 1926 it remained less than a quarter finished.

Today, despite the attentions of countless architects over the years, it’s still not done. The current plan is to get the main work finished by 2026 – marking 100 years after Gaudi’s death, hit by a tram outside the construction site – though they’ll be adding to the surrounding park and decorations until well into the 2030s.

So what went wrong? A lack of money, for one thing – in the early years Sagrada Família relied exclusively on private donations, and from the 1940s through to the 1990s construction often stopped entirely.

The Spanish Civil War of the mid-1930s – which saw a fire destroy some of the crypt – didn’t help, not least as Gaudi’s original plans and plaster models were all 50

destroyed; it took 16 years to piece what remained together. By 2010 the building was judged half complete, but many of the toughest jobs remained – not least the construction of 10 more spires, each representing a New Testament figure. As it stands, the building is quite something: short but wide, immensely complex, with no right angles and few straight lines.

Gaudi’s design demands 18 spires – for the 12 Apostles, the Virgin Mary, the four Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and one, tallest of all, for Jesus Christ Himself. When finished, this last one, topped by a giant cross, will make it the tallest church building in the world – though still a metre shorter than the city’s Montjuic Hill, as Gaudi believed his creation should not be taller than God’s.

As for the delay, as Gaudi once said, his client – God – “is not in a hurry”.

Return Address: Christopher Ward (London) Limited 1 Park Street Maidenhead Berkshire SL6 1SL United Kingdom

The C60 Elite 1000

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