Feature: 5 Watches That Have One Bizarre Trick
It’s not unreasonable of us to expect every watch to at least tell us the time, while complex functions like chronographs—once ground-breaking—are now as common as face tattoos in a Mexican prison.
So how does a luxury watch really stand out from the crowd these days? By featuring one just-for-the-hell-of-it, attention-grabbing trick that even the great Louis Breguet himself couldn’t have conjured up in an absinthe-induced fever dream.
Check out these five watches that go way beyond the mere quirky...
Jaquet Droz Bird Repeater
Jaquet Droz is renowned for its intricate enamel dials and ingenious automata. It combines both on its incredible bird minute repeater watches with their whimsical woodland scenes that play out on the dial. As the minute repeater chimes away—which itself is pretty special—two robins or blue tits (oh, grow up!) attend to their chicks. The climax however is a hatchling emerging from the egg in the middle. Some models even feature a constantly moving waterfall on the dial.
Speake-Marin Velsheda
The Velsheda, a watch by the independent brand Speake-Marin, contains a hermetically sealed booze-filled capsule set within the dial. The booze in question is a droplet of the world’s oldest rum, twelve bottles of which were found in the dusty cellar of an old estate in Leeds, England, in 2011. Perfect if you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere and need a belly-warming snifter. Of course, you’ll have to smash up a ridiculously expensive high-end watch to get it. It’ll be the most expensive drink you’ll ever have.
Richard Mille RM 069 Erotic Tourbillon
The prudish among you should politely avert your eyes right now. Richard Mille’s Erotic Tourbillon—yes, we sniggered at the model's reference number too—has an ‘oracle complication’ that turns it into the watch world’s version of Love Heart sweets, albeit for grown-ups. The top half of the watch is dominated by three revolving blocks that mix and match erotic messages, activated by a pusher at 10 o’clock. And if you think the message displayed in the image above is a little on the tame side, rest assured they get a lot raunchier than that.
Christophe Claret Baccara Dragon
What would we do without our smartphones to entertain us while we’re standing in a queue at the airport or sitting in a dentist’s waiting room? If we were lucky enough to own a Christophe Claret Baccarat Dragon watch we could indulge in a bit of harmless gambling, where our watch is the dealer. This piece, one of just nine made, even has a roulette wheel on the case back, as well as a couple of tiny dice embedded in the case.
Greubel Forsey Art Piece 1
Art and luxury watches have been happy bedfellows over the years, with more collaborations than you can rattle a can of spray-paint at. Most recently Jaeger-LeCoultre has recreated iconic art masterpieces in enamel for its casebacks. Greubel-Forsey, however, as it so often does, has gone one step further by inserting a secret micro-sculpture into the heart of the watch. The sculptures, made by the English artist Willard Wigan, who can create whole city skylines that fit in the eye of a needle, can be seen through a magnifying lens in the side of the watch.
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