A look inside the popular reference book on vintage and modern mechanical watches
Around the holidays, outlets are prone to putting out all kinds of “gift guides” offering recommendations on what to buy the watch lover in your life. In fact, this very publication made one last year. This year, instead of a listicle that Santa can check twice, I thought I’d give a review of a book I often see on these lists: The Watch, Thoroughly Revised, by Gene Stone and Stephen Pulvirent. Released in November of 2018, it’s the follow-up to Stone’s 2007 book, The Watch. This time around, Stephen Pulvirent, editor at Hodinkee, joins Stone to update the book. As the book’s description says: “in the decade since it was first published, the international audience of watch lovers and watch collectors has grown exponentially.”
As Pulvirent tells it, he didn’t know much about watches when he first arrived at Hodinkee years ago, so the original printing of The Watch is the book that founder Ben Clymer stuffed in his bag as a homework assignment. “Read this, young padawan,” the cashmere-clad Clymer said. Pulvirent says it’s been a reference guide for him ever since.
Being relatively new to watches, I’d agree with him: there’s something for everyone in here, and while some may roll their eyes when the book parrots facts that are generally accepted as common knowledge in the watch community, there’s often interesting facts about brands, models, or key individuals hidden just a few lines away for the committed reader to uncover. In watch collecting, as in other aspects of life, one of the greatest curses is to think or pretend that one knows it all; a reader that suffers from this curse may not enjoy this book, but others will.
The Watch is a three-part reference book. First, there’s a brief overview of the history of timekeeping and watches. Second, and making up the majority of the book, are short profiles of 50 of the most important watch brands, accompanied by pictures of some of their most notable watches. Finally, there’s a section titled “Buying, Collecting, and Maintaining”, which gives tips for novice and experience enthusiasts alike. While some of the tips are trite (“go online”, “visit watch stores”), the commentary is at times illuminating, and there are short profiles of “normal” watch lovers worth reading. This last section also contains a number of “top ten” lists (“10 models you need to know”, “6 manually wound chronographs”), likely designed to spark conversation and controversy more than anything.
“The urge to know time predates recorded history,” begins part one of The Watch. From the beginning, we’re told of the book’s grand intentions to place timepieces as central to not only the fashion industry or perhaps to Switzerland, but as central to human history itself. And, by the way, as a watch enthusiast, I buy every word of it: as our ability to tell time evolved from looking at the sun and the stars to building sundials to creating mechanical timepieces, so to did civilization itself evolve. How else would all those new factory workers have gotten to their shifts on time during the Industrial Revolution if not for extremely accurate mechanical timepieces?
Throughout, the book provides interesting facts to interlace cultural and historical figures with the history of timekeeping. For example, in the 18th Century, Swiss Protestant reformer John Calvin had forbidden craftsmen from making something as frivolous as jewelry, but encouraged them to manufacture the more practical watch. Who knew that Switzerland’s modern watch industry owes a debt of gratitude to Calvinism’s austere theology? Ironically, Abraham-Louis Breguet, perhaps the most important figure in horology history, proves the exception to this; he was a Swiss who did most of his work in Paris.
Rolex, of course
The profiles of 50 brands provide similar historical context, often in the form of giving a modern history of the many mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations that have given way to the modern watch industry. For instance, start with Cartier’s profile for a brief history of how the modern Richemont Group came to be: when Louis Cartier died in 1942, the company faltered and was broken into several smaller, regional companies until it was eventually reunified in the 1970s. Then, in 1988, it purchased 60 percent of Piaget (which itself owned a majority stake in Baume & Mercier) to form the Vendome Luxury Group, later called the Richemont Group. Meanwhile, in 1991, IWC was busy founding LMH, a company which owned not only IWC but also 90 percent of A Lange & Sohne and 60 percent of Jaeger-LeCoultre (with Audemars Piguet owning the remaining portion). Richemont bought LMH in 2000, forming the true luxury conglomerate we know today. See Swatch Group for a similar profile on the making of another modern luxury conglomerate.
But these histories aren’t dedicated to only the large modern conglomerates: there’s also profiles of smaller companies. Take, for example, American watch company Elgin, founded during the Civil War. It found success in the early half of the 20th Century before pivoting to manufacturing military equipment during World War II. After the war it tried to go back to watches but struggled: Timex carved out the low end of the market and there was nowhere for Elgin to go.
The Watch has profiles of 50 watch brands, including smaller upstarts like Ressence
If I have one complaint about The Watch, it’s this: this is a book about brands, not about specific watches. Don’t come in expecting to learn everything you need to know about collecting the Rolex Daytona, for example. It’s a 260+ page coffee table book, but I wouldn’t object to it being nearly twice that length.
Similarly, while the images are sharp and plentiful, they do leave something to be desired. They’re all photoshopped cutouts of only the watches, with no background, context, or anything else of interest to draw the eye’s attention. Perhaps this is appropriate for a book titled “The Watch”, but in a day when we’re inundated with beautiful images on Instagram and dedicated online publications daily, it leaves something to be desired.
The final section of The Watch, dedicated to buying, collecting, and maintaining, provides tips to help collectors avoid common pitfalls and slip ups we’ve all experienced in this hobby. It does this in two ways: first, by the authors themselves providing some tips and tricks; second, by providing short profiles of a variety of collectors. The profiles feature everyone from the common collector to more notable names like Paul Boutros (Head of Watches, Phillips) and George Cramer (noted Cartier expert).
When I first opened The Watch, I didn’t really know what type of book to expect. When it comes to watch books, most are either coffee-table decoration or in-depth reference guides meant to serve as the definitive source on whatever niche of watch collecting its chosen as its subject. The Watch is mostly the former, though there is enough depth and detail to provide some new information to even the most hardened of collectors.
Indeed, what The Watch does best is distill watches and watch collecting down to their essentials, making it easy and accessible for those new to the hobby to enjoy, while still giving collectors enough content to sink their teeth into without becoming bored.
