This year has of course been a challenging one for all of us; over the course of 2020 I have tried to invest more of my time and effort into Watch Affinity and to grow it, from a new website design launched at the beginning of summer, the articles written over the course of the year, and there are some more projects yet to come. For this article I wanted to look back over the year and pick out my best articles in 2020.
A Year in Review, Watch Affinity in 2020
Since launching Watch Affinity, the one thing that I had always wanted to do more of was to take the opportunity to write more. It is something I’ve always enjoyed, and yet I’ve never really found an outlet for it until starting this blog. Even then, at the start of this journey, I hadn’t really found my ‘voice’ just yet.
As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, I decided to set myself a challenge – to write an article every week. For the most part of this year I have managed this and have published a total of 43 articles (44 if you count this) in 2020.
Let’s take a look back at my 5 favourite articles, and why they are close to my heart:
In Conversation with Max Büsser
Far and away my highlight of this year was the opportunity to speak with Founder and Creative Director of MB&F, Max Büsser. The first time I discovered MB&F, my mind was well and truly blown and it is no understatement to say that Max’s designs completely altered my perception of what a watch is or could be, and during a visit to Geneva in 2019 a visit to the MB&F M.A.D Gallery was a definite highlight.
I will be forever thankful to Max for taking the time to speak with me about his incredible career, an experience I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from – after all, how many people can say that their first ever interview was with Max Büsser?! A genuinely lovely person who I can only hope that one day I will be able to thank in person, once the craziness of 2020 has, hopefully, subsided.
Founder and Creative Director of MB&F, Max Büsser
In Conversation with Ludovic Ballouard
Next up is the video interview created with, in my opinion, one of the finest independent watchmakers around – Ludovic Ballouard. I had spoken with Ludovic’s team previously and when I approached them about doing an interview with Ludovic, they were very much open to the idea but had one question for me – “do you speak French?”
Now, I do speak some French and I can easily survive a week in Paris on holiday, but I am most certainly not at the level required to conduct an interview with a master watchmaker on his career in horology! After a bit of back and forth, we decided on creating a video – I sent my questions to Ludovic’s team and they were kind enough to take some time out from their schedule to film a video of Ludovic answering my questions in French, and send it back to me accompanied with a transcript of the answers. I edited a video together (another first for me) and built in subtitles, and musician Lufflo even created a custom soundtrack just for this video!
Again, I will be eternally grateful to Ludovic and his team for taking the time to speak with me, and one day when I can pay a visit to Geneva, I would love to be able to visit Ludovic in his atelier and be able to say ‘merci beaucoup’ in person.
The video is below, but you can also check it out on our IGTV channel
"Only the present has meaning" - Watch Affinity interview with Ludovic Ballouard
It’s Complicated – the Co-Axial Escapement – approved by Jack Forster!
At the start of 2020 I started writing a series of articles called ‘It’s Complicated’, taking a look at different complications – in fact the first few were collated together and published by Millenary Watches – it might not be my finest set of photographs but it is interesting to look back at where I was at the start of the year! Anyway, for each of these articles I have tried to research the complication, how it works, the history of it etc to try and provide an interesting read with a very specific horological topic.
Over the course of this year I learned a lot about Dr. George Daniels and his Co-Axial escapement; perhaps the single greatest horological achievement in the twentieth century. As a result, I decided to write a new chapter of ‘It’s Complicated’ to look at the Co-Axial escapement and to share what I had learned, and to try and help explain just why Dr. Daniels’ achievement is so significant. And so, I set about researching and writing the article.
A few days prior to my article being ready to publish, the inimitable Jack Forster published an article which also explored the escapement on Hodinkee and this proved to be quite timely!
When I published the article promotion post on Instagram, I couldn’t resist mentioning Jack’s article as it was one I had thoroughly enjoyed reading. I woke up the next day to find a comment on my post from the man himself, just letting me know that he had read my article and it was “first class”… Jack Forster had read, and enjoyed, my article! If that is not a pinnacle highlight for any amateur watch blogger, I don’t know what is!!
Jack Forster's comment on Instagram, @watchaffinity.co.uk
In pursuit of Ultra-Thin Watchmaking
During 2020 I have tried to create different types of articles – there are ‘It’s Complicated’ articles looking at specific complications, as well as ‘Spotlight’ and ‘My Spotlight’ articles looking at a particular watch or family, or one of our readers’ watches respectively. This piece didn’t quite fit as nicely into one of these as I would like, and so it became a standalone piece looking at ultra-thin watchmaking.
For this piece, I wanted to explore the idea of ultra-thin watchmaking after having been fortunate enough this year to see first hand a Piaget Altiplano as well as a multitude of Bulgari Octo Finissimo pieces with thanks to David Roditi and the team at Bulgari in London. It is something that my inner-engineer finds utterly fascinating, and I wanted to be able to explore this in a little more depth and to try and quantify the countless achievements and records held by both Piaget and Bulgari in the last decade or so.
Bulgari Octo Finissimo calibre BVL 138
Spotlight: Blancpain Fifty Fathoms
This was the second article written in the ‘Spotlight’ series, and for this I wanted to explore the history of one of the most influential timepieces from the 1950s – the first purpose-built dive watch which emerged in 1953, the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms. I put a lot of time and effort into researching this article when I was putting it together, and it is one that I am quite proud of as a result.
The original 1953 Blancpain Fifty Fathoms
In Summary
This year has of course been a difficult and challenging year, and Watch Affinity has been an outlet and a form of escapism for me throughout. If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I would have had a Zoom chat with Max Büsser and created a video with Ludovic Ballouard, not to mention that Jack Forster would read (and enjoy!) one of my articles, I would never have believed you.
I guess that it just goes to show that, even in these most uncertain of times, not every door that is closed is locked – sometimes you just have to try and open them.
If you have any questions, or want to share your thoughts, please get in touch via our Contact page, or via our Instagram.
You might also be interested in:
- Watch Photography class at Harrods with Vacheron Constantin & Leica
- Introducing Watch Affinity Interactive Maps
- Watch Stationery and Gift Ideas
- Watch Books, Watch Boxes and more at the Watch Affinity Shop on Amazon (commissions earned)
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