We love the ONLY WATCH auction that takes place every other year in Monaco for the support of charity. Why do we love it? Well a range of participating watch brands produce totally unique watches that are auctioned off for charity (Monegasque Association against Muscular Dystrophy). The pieces are sometimes mere color variations on existing models, and sometimes they are radically new models that are production concepts or signs of things to come. In any event, they are all one-off pieces (with the exception of models that are “#1” in a limited edition). The brands do it for the massive media exposure and marketing opportunity.
UPDATE: See the aBlogtoWatch full list of Only Watch 2013 Watches.
2013 is the 5th edition of the Only Watch (administered and operated by auctioneer Antiquorum) auction and it will take place later in 2013 on September 28th. The participating brands will slowly release their Only Watch pieces until then. While more brands may be added later, here are the companies that we expect to see interesting timepieces from over the next several months:
- Backes & Strauss
- Bell & Ross
- Blancpain
- Breguet
- Chanel
- Chopard
- ChronoSwiss
- Christophe Claret
- Corum
- Cyrus
- deLaCour
- De Bethune
- DeWitt
- Franck Muller
- Frédérique Constant
- Girard Perregaux
- Glasshütte Original
- Harry Winston
- Heritage Watch Manufactory
- Hublot, Ikepod
- Jaquet Droz
- Ladoire
- Laurent Ferrier
- Louis Vuitton
- Manufacture Royale
- Maurice Lacroix
- Montblanc
- Patek Philippe
- Piaget
- Richard Mille
- Roger Dubuis
- Armin Strom
- Ulysse Nardin
- Vacheron Constantin
- Van Cleef & Arpels
- Vulcain
- Zenith
Certainly, I’ve a soft spot for contemporary watches which try to recreate the majestic artistic density of classic timepiece creations that I fawn within museum settings. Brands like Jaquet Droz possess a rich history to pull away from, but in reality, the whole watch industry has several hundred decades of incredible designs and artistic techniques to inspire them. Modern tastes and industrial clinics avoid most of the historic hand-done artwork to be used on the modern watches, but it’s nice to know that at some watches like the Jaquet Droz Grande Seconde Tourbillon Paillonnée try to unite modern aesthetic concerns with artistic techniques that many folks can continue to love. I think Jaquet Droz blends the old and the new together quite well in watches in this way, but they’re quite limited in their creation by character. This benchmark J013033242 watch is produced as a limited edition of just 8 watches with a cost of $119,200. My love of aventurine inspired me to write about this particular limited edition version of the Jaquet Droz Grande Seconde Tourbillon – which is known as the Grande Seconde Tourbillon Aventurine ref. J013014270 (as you’ll see in a moment, a name that is a bit ironic). Limited to just 28 bits, this is an interestingly decorative variant of one of the very simple and tasteful tourbillon watches available.aBlogtoWatch first covered the Jaquet Droz Grande Second Tourbillon here, back in 2012. That makes it kind of “uni-sex,” although this size and style is popular in Asia, a place where Jaquet Droz is quite successful. So while the diamonds and mother-of-pearl are somewhat female for a few Western male tastes, I wouldn’t move ahead and assume that this is a lady’s watch. It’s in fact marketed as a men’s design, I think.
That is a huge number of brands and you can compare them to the all the pieces from the Only Watch 2011 auction. We look forward to sharing with you the auction pieces as they trickle out leading up to the event in September of 2013. onlywatch.com