WatchDossier Issue 16 - 2025
Where the Past Persists, and the Future Interrupts.
Editorial
This issue formed its own quiet constellation: an auction in Hong Kong revealing the emotional economies of collecting; a Doha-born GPHG contender whispering its way into global relevance; a community-revived Benrus diver questioning what “authentic” even means anymore. Each piece points to the same tension — an industry caught between wanting clarity and preferring myth.
The independents in The Classifieds continue to arrive as characters rather than products, each flirting with its own absurdity. Meanwhile, the voices of 2000 — Muller, Büsser, Bernheim, Patrizzi, Scheufele — reappear as if to remind us that every prediction about watchmaking is really a confession about what we fear losing. And The Matter of Time traces how materials became emotional arguments: platinum as gravitas, ceramic as permanence, bronze as sanctioned decay, recycled waste as virtue made collectible.
Taken together, these six pieces suggest that mechanical watches endure not because they measure time, but because they reflect us — our nostalgia, our anxieties, our appetite for meaning dressed as metal. In a market still negotiating what luxury ought to feel like, the contradictions remain the most honest signals we have.
— The Editor
THE CLASSIFIEDS (BUT NOT REALLY) Vol. 7
You won’t find full specs here. You will find intent, posture, poetry. These are horological classifieds for new releases from independents — announcements, invitations, provocations — interpreted fo…
When Watchmakers Imagined Tomorrow’s World
At the turn of the millennium, five leading voices in Swiss watchmaking reflected on the forces reshaping their industry—group consolidation, technological change, shifting notions of luxury. First p…
THE MATTER OF TIME
Over the last few decades, we have witnessed a curious transformation in humanity’s relationship with matter itself—an alchemy not of base metal into gold, as pursued by the ancients, but of meaning …
Benrus Ultra-Deep: A Faithful Heritage Diver.
The return of the Benrus Ultra-Deep arrives at an oddly theatrical moment in watch culture. The industry is simultaneously exhausted by nostalgia yet dependent on it; skeptical of reissues yet unable…
Beda'a Eclipse: Doha’s Minimalist GPHG Watch
The contradiction arrives early: a young independent brand from Doha, newly reshaped under a design-forward CEO, offering a poetic, near-conceptual watch for CHF 2,000 and then finding itself shortli…
Five Objects, One Question: What Do We Really Collect?
On November 30 at Antiquorum in Hong Kong, five disparate watches converged in an auction that revealed the emotional economies underpinning collecting—nostalgia, performance, mythmaking, and the qu…
The next issue will be published on January 25, 2026.