My first meeting was with Romain, who didn't have a new model, rather an expansion on the Insight Micro-Rotor model he debutted last year. This year a polished Titanium version with several dial options. The blue enamel piece limited to 10 was a winner.

He also for the first time in several years (4yrs at Baselworld) showed a couple of pieces from the original HM series. These are the simple classic Hours & Minutes pieces with lovely guilloche dials.

The movement finishing is superlative and a refreshing moment to reflect upon where he has come since the beginning.

The platinum model with it's lovely frosted finish of the mainplate and bridges and the RG with the Geneva stripes. The HM model is so much Romain, and knowing him that much better now after all these years, I really appreciate this exquisite time only watch.

The back of the Insight Micro Rotor

Here is a new Logical One in natural titanium with a lovely black enamal dial

I then headed about 50' away to where Marco was showing. Eagerly anticipating the release of the Anton, I was not to be disappointed. This watch is cased in the rectangular case from last year's massive hit, the Georg. Featuring again the lovely white enamel arabic dial, this execution sports an elegant classic Saxon style Flying Tourbillon down at 6 o'clock in place of the sub seconds. The Anton movement side sports those wonderfully high polish curved steel cocks against the frosted finish main plate. A feast for the eyes! Marco showed me a platinum version as well as a RG model. The wonderfully thin cage is styled after the brilliant and famous Saxon watchmaking teacher, Alfred Helwig used to design his tourbillon cages. Black polished superbly, it is a sight to behold. Marco resisted for years to make a tourbillon, as he felt it was over subscribed within the watch world, well finally he decided to do it and wow! As is his way, it is so well designed and executed to his exacting standards, the Anton will make it's new owner very happy.

I spoke about an impending USA visit by Marco, and made plans for an event on the west coast and also hopefully on the East Coast, NYC a likely place. One of the great things about Basel is the ability to view models never before been seen or created, in this vein I was thrilled to see a Friedrich-August 1st cased in RG with the killer blued steel Louis XV hands. Particularly as I have a client who is interested in ordering this piece, and I have to say I really liked it in person, even though I typically prefer romans.

Next up was a lunch meeting with Stefan Kudoke, usually associated with hand skeletonizing and his famous Kudoktopus model. In fact until now, all his work has been the highly skilled manually, rather than with the help of CNC machines, skeleton working of the calibers, dials and hands of his watches. Based outside of Dresden in the former eastern Germany, his focus and passion is patently obvious when Stefan is speaking of his work and about watchmaking. This year he collaborated with the brilliant Austrian duo, known to many a seasoned watch aficionado as Habring2. He designed his new caliber using the Felix caliber as a starting point and certainly changed much about the aesthetic to give it a very different look and feel to it's Austrian counterpart. Basing the design of the main bridge from an old English pocketwatch he's owned for many years, he has a hand engraved balance cock that features his signature infinity symbol within the engraving. The frosted finish and blued screws are common in Saxon watchmaking. A note here, to say that Stefan does all this hand finishing of the mainplate, bridges, wheels and bluing of the screws himself. The hand engraving is done by a colleague, but again to Stefan's exacting design ethos. This resulting Time Only piece, known as the Kudoke 1, is to my sense of watchmaking, quite lovely. A coherent design executed by a truly skilled watchmaker/craftsman. I am excited to bring a couple of these lovely pieces out to California in due course once he has begun to build them in a series. As a prototype, this watch is impressive and I'm not sure it needs anything else to improve it!