A smart watch that does less
Imagine being monitored by your watch. Every step calculated. Your sleep pattern analysed. Bit weird, isn’t it? Meanwhile, the mechanical C1 Moonglow tells the time and charts the phases of the moon. All without spying on you. Do your research.
christopherward.co.uk
Gold rush
News, reports & innovations. This issue: The amazing new CWArchive. Plus! The Drawing Board is back.
The C65 Black Gold channels a sexy 1970s glamour all its own…
The C65 Diver is a watch that looks pretty damn great no matter what colour scheme you use, but here’s one to really knock your socks off. Called Black Gold, referencing a nickname given to the John Player Special Formula One cars of the 1970s, it offers a particularly attractive variation on the two-tone, bi-metal theme currently having an unexpected resurgence in the fine watch world. But instead of the standard steel-and-yellow-gold look, this piece combines black with truly striking golden bronze for a watch that whispers of Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti. “Few people of a certain generation can look at these colours and not think of the JPS cars,” says Christopher Ward co-founder Mike France. “But the look actually comes from a unique prototype sample watch, which I wore to our Edinburgh Get-Together back in January. That one was made of actual bronze metal with black DLC portions, and it got an absolutely phenomenal reaction; people were buzzing
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around it like flies. In fact, the only negative comment we heard was from those who liked it so much that they wanted it to stay in its pristine state. They were unsure about the patination you’d eventually get with actual bronze. We thought, okay, why don’t we do it differently? Instead of bronze, we could use a DLC coating, giving the same look but guaranteed to keep box-fresh.” Limited to 200 pieces, Black Gold’s 41mm C65 Trident Diver case is therefore rendered in black DLC and bronze-brown PVD, while inside is a hand-wound Sellita SW210. The face, caseback and bezel are in black, while the lugs, crown and sides of the case are golden bronze-brown. “If the reaction from Edinburgh is anything to go by,” Mike says, “it’ll attract admiring glances like little else.” The C65 Black Gold LE is limited to 200 pieces, and costs £845. Read about the JPS Lotuses that inspired it on page 22