TimeTexas

Agreed, it does add to the scarcity and I absolutely love my Raw Ornament more and more - such a unique timepiece. I imagine the new models will continue to have a lot of retro-modern style and hopefully redesigned but still amazingly unique lugs. The sketch they posted from the design studio a while back was certainly interesting looking but not sure if it was supposed to be representative of where they are headed. Maybe @Damiaen can share some special behind the scenes looks at the process in the club as they get closer. That's the exact sort of thing I envisioned when I created this forum.

Holthinrichs announced today that it is stopping production of its popular Ornament 1 and Raw models. You can still order these models through May 1st. I'm sad to see these go because they are some of my favorite watches in production, but I believe Michiel and team are some of the most innovative watchmakers in the world today so I'm extremely excited to see the upcoming models to be announced later this year. Is nearly impossible to innovate when you're busy just focused on meeting the demands for existing models. So this allows Holthinrichs to move forward. Announcement below. It is time for the next chapter! Full stop of production of Ornament 1 and RAW Ornament models to allow for new creativity In 2016 I introduced the Ornament 1 featuring an unprecedented skeleton case design created by smart implementation of state of the art 3D metal printing. Two years later, in 2018, the company was responsible for two major introductions. With the solid 3D printed gold version of the Ornament 1 we brought the world’s first 3D printed solid gold mechanical timepiece to the market. Soon followed by the introduction of “Horlogerie Brut” as a new concept in watchmaking: the RAW Ornament showcased a sculptural and textural design in which extensive manual finishing is contrasted with a selective use of raw textures directly derived from the printing process. An unconventional combination as a direct result of a new way of thinking about production and implementing new technologies. Evolution With the evolution of our models we developed a great passion for technical development and manual finishing. Aspects which soon became one of the key values of our brand. By now all our movements, cases and dials are either completely handmade or extensively hand-finished from raw components. By controlling most of the design and build processes ourselves, we have managed to establish a strong and distinctive design language. Over the years our timepieces have reached a selective and enthusiastic crowd of pioneering collectors worldwide and the company rapidly expanded from a one-man show to a small team of 10 dedicated specialists. The last two years we invested a lot in the technical development of both our products and workshop, and we created in-house training programs to educate new staff in our specific manufacturing processes. High ambitions for the future Alongside our investments in capacity also our ambitions are rising. We improved our skills, and our models became more and more demanding in their manufacturing process. In our current structure we are capable of producing around 100-120 timepieces per year, but we notice that we cannot find a good balance between the time needed for the production of our models, and the space needed for new creative developments. Although we love the Ornament 1 and RAW Ornament models and we believe the opportunities with these models are far from depleted, we have decided it is time to announce the stop of production of these models to fully focus our creativity on new exciting developments, following our hearts and high ambitions for the brand. We’d like to thank you and every single owner and supporter of our work! For those who have been following us and considered obtaining a piece, now is the final chance to get a hold of one of the very last Ornament 1 or RAW timepieces. Meanwhile we will ask you to remain patient towards the disclosure our next chapter towards the end of the year. Kindest regards, Michiel Holthinrichs & Team Holthinrichs Watches Limited availability. The Ornament 1 and RAW Ornament are still available for ordering until May 1st 2023. For everyone responding before Monday the 6th of March - the official announcement - we can guarantee to still have a production slot available. Depending on your specific requests, we will strive to have all Ornament 1 and RAW Ornament timepieces ready for delivery by the end of this year. As a final note we can already disclose that we are working on one last limited farewell edition, which is soon to be announced. Copyright © 2022 Holthinrichs Watches, All rights reserved. Holthinrichs Watches Lange Geer 72 2611 PW, Delft The Netherlands http://holthinrichswatches.com info@holthinrichswatches.com +31 (0) 6 43 58 19 00 You are receiving this email because you gave us your address Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Sad news in the independent watch world today. Gerd-Rüdiger Lang, Master Watchmaker and founder of independent watchmaker Chronoswiss, passed away. https://koboldwatch.com/pages/obituary-gerd-rudiger-lang

@watch_ape with The Melted Monkey. Might be the leader in the Clubhouse.

Awesome suggestions! Drunken Terminator has some potential. HAL 10000 is great! Same with Atomic Vomit. I need to start a poll. I'll add these suggestions. Thanks

A few of my thoughts...open to votes or suggestions. The Houston Hustle TopoColores The Danish Jiggle The Danish Twist Jiggy Pop Terminator The Drunken Redeye Marmalade Headshot (James' suggestion)

Time to name the dials. We'll start with mine.

Hey man, for some reason this wasn't showing up as a new post for me so completely missed it. In any event, OuJ is a fantastic brand as an introduction to independent watchmaking. Fantastic complications (or simplifications, in this case) and I had the opportunity to interact with Kornelia and James during the development of the Fifth Wrist Settimana collaboration. Great people and they exemplify what independent watchmaking is all about. Definitely look forward to adding a second OuJ in the future. Cheers!

Markéta's summary of the places we visited. 1. We started with Birell non-alcoholic beer and 2021 Gruner Veltliner white wine by Stasko family winery, a sausage with mustard, fried matured cheese served with tartare sauce, potato salad and Prague ham served with horseradish and whipped cream at Lokal pub over at Dlouha 33. 2. We tried a meatloaf sandwich with pickles and mustard from Nase maso butcher shop. Nase maso is located at Dlouha 39. 3. Next we visited Kro Bistro and Bar and tried grilled chicken with brown butter plus house-made soy sauce, fermented potato pancakes, cabbage slaw, beef shank with wild mushroom sauce with pickled chanterelles and parsley oil and grilled potatoes in herb pesto. We also tasted 2017 Kliment Extra Brut cidre and baked lemon with pink pepper house-made lemonade. Kro bistro and bar is located at Sokolovská 79. 4. Aaaaand we finished with burnt potatoes in ash with potato and cream espuma paired with gin and tonic made from artisan Garage 22 Distillery gin and house-made tonic water plus sea buckthorn fermented lemonade and selection of desserts with Vetrnik: choux pastry with vanilla buttercream and white chocolate infused whipped cream with sea buckthorn gel, Spicka: delicate chocolate cream/mousse cake with vanilla and there was also wild raspberry sorbet at Eska (Pernerova 49). I'll post my thoughts in a subsequent post, but while it was all extremely good, the Kro Bistro and Bar, especially the grilled chicken with brown butter plus house-made soy sauce was simply incredible. Amazingly different than any sauce than I've ever had and incredibly good.

So I've spent the last few days in Prague. I've never been to Prague before and it's absolutely wonderful. My wife and I always enjoy going to nice dinners when we travel but having never been there, my wife asked around for some recommendations and was put in touch with a group called Taste of Prague which hosts a Foodie Tour. If you don't have much local knowledge or specific recommendations for places to eat, I HIGHLY recommend checking this out if you are visiting the city. Our guide was Markéta and she was wonderful. I believe they usually have slightly larger groups of 8-10 people, but for our tour it was just my wife and me. Markéta was fantastic. Extremely friendly, energetic, and passionate, but more importantly for a food tour she grew up in Prague and is very knowledgeable about the city and the food. She was able to not only design a tour that was a great fit for us but also discussed the history of the food and the details of how the dishes were made. We hit some wonderful restaurants and had some unbelievable food and drinks. Afterwards, Markéta sent us a recap of the places we visited and gave some additional suggestions for other places to try. I'll post these in the next post, but if you're looking for a great excursion in Prague, I can't recommend Taste of Prague enough.

So the move to a softbox light has been a big step up. But now that I'm used to it, I feel like I need to get one that is a little more flexible as far as the light output. Being able to adjust the brightness/warmth will extremely helpful. Stephen has given me a few suggestions, so I'm going to begin researching those and others. Any suggestions are appreciated. I'll report back on my findings.

So, Anders has started naming the dials, with the first being Tokyo Dracula for @arziogas. So we need names for the others above. All suggestions welcome, serious or otherwise. Tokyo Dracula

Had a conversation with Asked and he's been busy providing some new watchmaking equipment. Keep an eye out here and in Instagram on news if the Via Lactea version 2 coming soon. Excited to see what is in store.

Lack of commitment!

Yeah, any chance you can make it? Looks to be some cool stuff there?

February 4, 2023 https://allevents.in/oslo/oslo-swap-meet-februar-2023/200023567427409

As an avid fan of cushion-style cases and Fears in general, I love this timepiece. I also like the collaboration and the promotion of British watchmaking. I think that's a great thing for watchmaking in general. It leverages the resources and widespread familiarity of CW to help Fears while also giving CW the ability to continue its move upmarket and to a different level of watchmaking which is clearly their goal. Both companies win and more importantly the fans of both brands have a wonderful new watch to consider adding to their collection. Thoughts on the watch and/or collaboration?

https://www.fearswatches.com/en-us/pages/alliance-01 The Alliance 01 is housed in an entirely new 40.5 mm Brunswick case made specially for this watch. With the same beautiful, expert finishing as the rest of the Fears collection, the Alliance 01 sits comfortably on the wrist, slipping under a shirt cuff with ease. Powered by Christopher Ward’s in-house JJ01 jumping hour module, the hour is displayed in a window at 12 o’clock in a bespoke version of our “Edwin’ typeface, with minutes indicated by a conventional hand. Photos from IG @fearswatches

So I'll start with my progression up to this point. I started just using the basic phone camera settings and snapping photos of watches that I just put down on some art. I quickly discovered I was much better off getting up early on Saturday and Sunday and using the morning light for my shots. Over time, I began to switch to the Pro settings on my Samsung which let me adjust shutter speed and ISO, and that was a big step up in the overall quality just making those adjustments. I bought some camera lighting which I used for some indoor shots and a big diffuser and used some white foam board for reflection. But the diffuser was unwieldy and nearly impossible to use. Perry suggested I get a couple plastic display sign holders and some vellum paper and use that as a diffuser. Those made an immediate difference and actually allowed me to set up shots somewhat and have better control of the lighting. I still use these. Then I started getting better at using the reflector to ensure there weren't dark areas on the watch. I still use the foam board (poster-sized and folded in half to stand on their own), along with some flat pieces that I can set on top or move around to get the lighting better. This again was a big improvement. It was slightly after that I learned about the exposure triangle and also that you want to keep the ISO as low as possible which improves the overall image quality. At this point I felt I was somewhat limited in what i could do with the phone and started to look into a camera. Personally, I hate onscreen menus, so I was drawn to the FujiFilm cameras which have external controls that are easy to use. Since I was used to using those same controls on my phone, the transition was pretty easy. I ended up with a FujiFilm XT-3 that I bought used but in great condition from https://keh.com. I definitely suggest it if you want to get something cheaper than new. As far as the lens, this was definitely overwhelming. There's still a lot I'm learning, but with @talkingabouttime's help, I decided on a Laowa 65mm/2.8 2x macro lens. I'll let others chime in on lenses, but this lens gets really good reviews and is relatively cheap compared to some other more expensive options. It was more than 50% off the Fuji 80mm macro lens. The trade-off is that it is manual focus. But I don't mind that as once you get it set up and learn the process for focusing, its not a big deal. Not only that, I think its a good thing to learn. Also, the 2x macro is AWESOME for getting really close up detailed shots. Most macro lenses don't come with this and are either 1/2 or 1x. I've had two primary issues as I've started to learn how to use a camera. Everything I did with the phone was quick and ad hoc. It was easy to move the phone around to get different angles, get closer/further away, change the light/flecto, etc. There wasn't any real setup involved. So learning how to use a tripod, set up the shot properly, and actually compose photos has been a learning process. My entire workflow changed and it isn't nearly as quick and easy as it was. That said, it pays dividends and just learning how to compose a photo makes an enormous difference in the overall quality. The second issue, which I'm still working at, is that my previous experience with cameras was with zoom lenses. So it was very easy to change the dynamic of the shot. Without the zoom, I have to physically move the camera in order to get the right distance away from the subject. With a macro lens, it is definitely great for most watch photos, but there are some times when its somewhat of a challenge to compose the shot and find the right distance with the camera to get all the elements I want. Anyways, I'm here to learn, but figured I'd give a little info on my current setup. I have a pretty good tripod, which I think is very helpful for setup. I also have a lightbox that Stephen gave me that really really helps with the lighting. Almost an absolute must I would say and you can find some for relatively cheap. Hopefully someone has some good options below. Acrylic Sign Holder KEH Laowa Lens

So as I've moved from my phone to my camera, there have been so many people who have helped me out. I think its a natural progression as you post your photos on Instagram and other social media to eventually want to improve your photography skills. Anyways, @horo_surgeon, @scaramanga_ and most recently @Talkingabouttime have all been an enormous help in providing tips and suggestions, help on buying a camera and lenses and other accessories, and even Stephen (@talkingabouttime) coming by my house to help me learn how to set up various shots. In just a short time my photos have already improved significantly. I've had different conversations with these guys and others in various chats, so figured I'd centralize a place for anyone who wants to be a part of the discussion. Whether you're already great and just want to help, or a beginner looking for help, this is the place.

Just received a notice that Collective will be announcing a new collaboration with James Lamb. Very excited to see this new project and I'll update with photos.

New for 2023 S. U. F. Announces the new Limited Edition 180N and 180NN. Limited to 25 pieces each.

Now that would be cool! I don't have the manual skills to do that. And I'm definitely not steady enough. Is an incredible process and requires resetting the coordinates of the offset after each pass to create the patterns. I'm sure that isn't the proper terminology, but it is very exacting and detailed work.