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- Bell & Ross Introduces Bronze And Green Diver; RZE's New Fortitude GMT Is An Incredible Package At A Great Price; Baume et Mercier Goes Arty Black; New From Union Glashütte And Roger Smith
Bell & Ross Introduces Bronze And Green Diver; RZE's New Fortitude GMT Is An Incredible Package At A Great Price; Baume et Mercier Goes Arty Black; New From Union Glashütte And Roger Smith
Are you an art fan? Pretty sure you will be able to appreciate the new Baume et Mercier
Vuk Radic
February 27, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 19 minutes
Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. The RZE is the clear winner of the day - all of those features at that price are pretty unbeatable.
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In this issue:
The New Bell & Ross Green And Bronze BR 03-92 Is Here For Those Who Want A Different Diver
RZE Is Introducing The Pilot Designed, Adventurer Approved Fortitude GMT At An Unbeatable Price
Baume et Mercier Release Hampton Polyptyque Edition With An Incredible Pierre Soulages-Inspired Black Dial
Union Glashütte Brings Back Dressier Options To The Noramis Date Models
Roger Smith Unveils One-Of-One Series 1 Watch, His Contribution To British Watchmakers’ Day
Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 36 seconds
👂What’s new
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Call me an uncultured rube, but I love a good Bell & Ross watch. Sure, it looks like they’re milking that square-watch-imitating-an-aircraft-instrument thing for all that it’s worth, but there are brands out there milking far less for far more. And I appreciate a good square watch - never mind that B&R are mostly circles within squares - as it’s incredibly difficult to pull off. And the BR 03-92 Diver is one of my favorites, as it’s just plain cool to see a square-cased diver. Now Bell & Ross is giving it a new look - a bronze case with a green dial and black bezel.
To be fair, the bronze is really not new. In fact, this still uses the old BR 03 style case, the same it used in the previous bronze edition. The case is square, so it measures 42mm in both dimensions. B&R don’t say how thick it is, but their watches usually come off as relatively thin due to their unusual shape that lends itself well to sitting on the wrist and the construction in which you first notice the thickness of the square case and the additional crystal and bezel almost play no role in it. Speaking of the bezel, it’s made out of bronze, with a black anodised insert that has a 60 minute scale. The screw down screw-down crown will be good down to 300 meters of water resistance.
New to the bronze case is the green dial. While the bronze-green combination is really not that unusual, B&R hasn’t opted for a deep forrest green, which is an instant match, but rather for a more teal-like green which is a bit refreshing in a world full of green-gold combinations. The indices and hands are blackened, while the minute track is printed in white. There’s a date window at the worst possible place, at 4:30, but it’s small, circular and well matched in color, so it can pass.
Inside is the brand’s often used BR-CAL.302 movement, which is a very slightly modified automatic Sellita SW300-1. A fine movement that’s easy to maintain. It beats at 28,800vph and has a power reserve of 54 hours. The watch comes on a black rubber strap with a matte black PVD-coated pin buckle and you get an additional synthetic fabric strap.
The Bell & Ross BR 03-92 Diver Black & Green Bronze is limited to 999 pieces and it’s priced at €4,990. See more on the Bell & Ross website.
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Since the Gregorian calendar doesn’t match up perfectly with the rotation of the Earth around the sun we have to make corrections, so that’s why every four years we have to add a day to February. When you think about it, it’s an incredibly primitive, but effective, solution to a problem that cannot be solved. And it’s very in line with challenges that mechanical watches have to overcome. So it’s kind of weird that more brands are not using the leap year to bring out something interesting. But Singaporean brand RZE, which specialised in affordable titanium watches ready for adventure, is here to pick up the slack and they’re launching a brand new watch version of their Fortitude, now a GMT in three fantastic colors.
The Fortitude is not a new watch, it’s one of the bases of the RZE lineup, what’s new is in the very important details. This means you get the same 41mm wide, 12mm thick Grade 2 titanium case with a satin finish and UltraHex coating. The lug-to-lug measurement is 47mm. On top is a heavily knurled bezel, giving it a similar look to the Oris Propilot. And another thing that might remind you of other brands, the likes of Nomos, is a red crown tube which serves as a warning if the crown is not fully screwed in. On top you get a sapphire crystal and the rated water resistance is 100 meters.
You will get a choice of four models, each differing in the color of the dial - NightHawk, Turbo Teal, Crimson Red and a 50-piece limited edition blacked-out Workbench. The names speak for themselves, with the NighHawk coming with a black dial, TurboTeal a nice green-blue teal with a fumé to black on the edges and Crimson Red parhaps the most interesting, a really beautiful red. The dials come in a sandwich construction, with the lumed hour markers sunken in, and the top colored part gets a heavily grained texture. The dial also has a printed crosshair, a date window at 6 o’clock and they have yellow details on the dial and on the very nice looking GMT hand.
Inside is the Miyota caliber 9075, which is revolutionising accessibility to what are called flyer GMT movements. Before Miyota launched the 9075 last year, to have a GMT movement in which you independently move the 12-hour hand in one-hour increments to set the local time was either expensive, difficult to do with modified movements or cheap/unreliable. The Miyota is changing this with their robust and affordable movement. It beats at 28,800vph, has a 42 hour power reserve and not great accuracy which is rated at -10/+30 seconds per day, but is usually much better in real life. The watch comes on a three-row bracelet with screwed links and the clasp that the brand used on the Resolute Pro which offers tool-less micro-adjustment.
The new RZE Fortitude GMT goes on pre-sale on February 29th at 10PM SGT time, 2PM GMT, with a pre-sale price of €599. Now come on. How can a watch that looks this good be this affordable? The price will go up after the pre-sale, but only up to €645. See more on the RZE website.
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Pierre Soulages died towards the end of 2022 at the age of 102. And up until that moment, he was easily recognized as the "the world's greatest living artist." An incredible title to carry, but even a brief look at his work shows why. Soulages formed his own practice of painting which he named Outrenoir, meaning Beyond Black. He was known as the painter of black, as his most influential works have been painted in just black, experimenting with light and reflections of this non-color. The paintings often use black striations going in different directions that create a dynamic and dramatic canvas.
And it’s these canvases that Baume et Mercier used for a special edition at the start of 2022 called the Baume et Mercier Hampton “Hommage à Pierre Soulages” Limited Edition. It was perhaps the prettiest dial of that year, all black with Soulages’ strations giving it depth that’s rare to see in watches. People obviously loved that collaboration of artist and watch brand, something that’s not always successful, so Baume et Mercier is back with another take - the Hampton Polyptyque Edition – Musée Soulages 10th Anniversary Limited Edition, based on Soulages’ Peinture 324 x 362 cm, 1986 (Soulages usually named his paintings Peinture, followed by the dimensions and year).
The watch is based on the same Hampton rectangular case. To match the black dial, the stainless steel case, which measures 31mm wide, 48.11mm tall and 10mm thick, gets a matte black DLC coating. All the hardware on this watch is pitch black with just a few 18k rose gold accents on the dial - on the tips of the hours and minutes hands and on the brand name.
The dial is a bit more dramatic than the previous version which was inspired with a more bold painting that had just a few alterations of black striations. This new one has dozens of vertical stripes of black painting, each getting hit by light at a different angle, giving it almost hues of black.
Inside is the very familiar and very solid ETA 2892 automatic calibre which has a power reserve of 42 hours. It’s also nicely finished, which is good as you can see it through the caseback, and the rotor features black Côtes de Genève, emulating the dial. The watch comes on a black strap that uses no animal products.
The Hampton Polyptyque Edition – Musée Soulages 10th Anniversary is available now and it’s limited and numbered to 328 pieces. The price is quite steep at $6,900 but with such a small run that targets fans of Soulages’ work, it could work. Especially if you take into account that the painter’s works sell for hundreds of thousands on the very low end. See more on the Baume et Mercier website.
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Among all the watches that Union Glashütte makes, one would expect they make plenty of dress options. After all, they are a traditional German watchmaker out of Glashütte. But one would be wrong. They are changing that now with the introduction of two new colorways to their racing-inspired Noramis collection. After they updated it last year with a bunch of interesting colors - yellows, greens and blues - the two new are actually the return of a white and black face, which turn the sports watch into a more of a dressy option.
This is by no means a strict dress watch, and Union Glashütte acknowledges this by placing it in the same case as the more sporty options. This means that the stainless steel case measures 40mm wide, which is larger than traditional dress watches, but with a lug-to-lug of 47mm it should be very wearable. Helping wearability is the thickness of 10.4mm. But the sporty roots are present in the brushed sides of the case (the top of the lugs are polished) and the 100 meter water resistance. On top is a domed sapphire crystal with almost no bezel, making this watch look like all-dial.
Two dials are available - black and silver/white. Both have a sunburst finish. On the silver dial you get rose gold applied markers and the black has silver, polished on both. Another nod to the sporty root of the watch are the Roman numerals. The taper-shaped hands with a polished finish bring it towards dressy territory, only to be pulled back into sporty with lume. The central seconds hand is white for the black dial variant and blue for the silver option and there’s a date window at 3 o’clock.
Inside is the UNG-07.S1 movement, an ETA-based movement with a silicon hairspring that beats at 25,200vph and has a 60 hour power reserve. The black version comes on a black calf leather strap with crocodile embossing, while the white/silver gets a brown strap with the same pattern.
The Union Glashütte Noramis Date in black or white are available now and sell for €2,400. An interesting choice for people who need a larger dress watch. See more on the Union Glashütte website.
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The British watchmaking industry has a long and proud history with both large and small watchmakers currently making some amazing pieces. To pay homage to this history, the Alliance of British Watch & Clock Makers is putting on British Watchmakers’ Day, a special celebration of all British watches, planned for March. And joining the celebration is the big dog of British wachmaking - Roger Smith. He is perhaps Britain’s most respected and successful independent watchmaker who makes less than 20 watches per year. His watches are so rare that only one sold at auction last year and that fetched a price of almost $5 million.
For British Watchmakers’ Day, Smith, like other British brands, will be making a one-off watch, but this one is a significant step above everything else. Based on his Series 1, the watch will come in a 38mm wide red-gold case, with a mixed metal dial with a silver engine-turned background inset with red-gold chapters. Smith claims that this is his ideal vision of the Series 1 and has been in the making for over a year. The movement is driven by the single-wheel co-axial escapement has his traditional English finish with gilded frosted plates and gold chatons and Smith worked with his engraver to create the resulting English rose pattern on the barrel bridge.
The Series 1 watch is being sold via an auction, which you can participate in on Smith’s website. If you can afford to, of course. You can only submit a sealed bid which has to exceed the reserve price of £297,500, without VAT. The auction closes at 3pm on March 9. A percentage of the sale will be donated to the Alliance of British Watch and Clock Makers which is a not-for-profit organisation. See more about the watch and the biddign process on Roger Smith’s website.
🫳On hand
Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon
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⚙️Watch Worthy
A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like
In this form, the Lorige AS-01 Tourbillon is part of a limited edition of just eight pieces. This limitation is due to the small amount of material the company has to work with (it could only acquire a limited number of brake pads. You see, the cases are primarily made from carbon brake material taken from the actual brake pad stock of Aryton Senna’s 1993 McLaren MP4/8. Lorige was able to acquire this material and decided it would be great as a watch case material.
⏲️Wait a minute
A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting
There’s a narrative that kind of annoys me. It’s that the CIA dragged the U.S. into invading Iraq by claiming they had WMDs. People love spreading this story around despite it being the exact opposite of the truth. The CIA again and again said there were no WMDs and it was the White House and the Pentagon that started the war. They said there were no WMDs because the CIA is incredibly good at their job. Remember when they knew the exact moment that Russia was going to attack the Ukraine and everybody made fun of them saying that Putin was not that crazy. Well, yeah… Now the New York Times has a great look behinds the scenes at the decade-long secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine that is now critical for both countries in countering Russia. Worth a read.
In the most high-security prison in America—a prison that has housed the Unabomber and El Chapo—no inmate lives under tighter communication restrictions than con artist James Sabatino, who is allowed to phone only his stepmother and his lawyer. As Alan Prendergast reports, these rules are in place not as punishment for any acts of violence, but rather to protect the general public from the scams of a man so skilled at his craft that he continued his frauds from behind bars.
Saudi Arabia is spending an unfathomable fortune to lure the biggest stars of global football (Ronaldo! Benzema! Neymar!) to its upstart league. So GQ ventured to the kingdom to discover what the gambit represents. Is this the future of the world’s most popular sport? The vanguard of sportswashing? Or something way bigger?
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
This video caught my attention so hard, and not just because of the ridicoulously amazing cover photo. No, it was the 2.3 million views it got in 3 days. Well that’s something else. But come on, how can a video on aliens in Antarctica not get so many views?
💵Pre-loved precision
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-Vuk
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