I woke this morning at "zero dark thirty" in order to catch an Amtrak train into New York City. The exhibition entry. My destination was a preview of "Icons of Time," an exhibition and collaboration between UBS (a bank) and its "House of Craft," Hodinkee and Hodinkee's founder and President Ben Clymer. I'd missed the last gathering of this sort, held around the same time last year. But this time around my schedule allowed me to participate so off I went. The event promised to offer twelve timepieces, one for each hour marker on a watch dial, curated by Clymer. According to my invite, these timepieces were selected because they are rare and "[embody] both the vision of its maker and the enduring legacy of those who have worn it." I decided to see if I could guess ahead of the event which twelve might be featured. I promise I'm typing up this list as I ride the train. My first guess would be an Omega Speedmaster because that watc...
There's a certain genre of watch lore involving lost and recovered timepieces. Arguably the most important of these is Cole Pennington's 2019 story of a watch worn by a Marine Corps pilot whose plane was shot down during a covert CIA operation over southern China in 1952. A photo of the recovered watch in question, photo credit Logan Barnard and Hawaii News Now. I've posted a couple of these stories as well, including one in which a watch owner faked throwing away a watch (only for his relatively to later find the watch was kept and sold) and another watch which was lost in a field by a farmer and later recovered. Rolex, the company, celebrated the "lost and found" story genre in the 1950s. An example of the "Fantastic Stories" campaign, this one about a watch lost underwater for seven years. In a series of advertisements dubbed "Fantastic Stories," Rolex retold some compelling experiences of watches and watch owners. At least two ...