A Letter From The Editor

It’s been a pleasure to see the number of readers increase every month and I always enjoy your emails, responses and reactions through all our social media channels. Thank you for that! Since Monochrome has started, back in 2006, it has been a thrill to see Monochrome grow to become one of the defining blogs (or online magazines) about watches. And as you know, we focus mainly on (ultra) Haute Horlogerie and Independent Watchmaking.

My latest acquisition perfectly fits the bill. It is a vintage Patek Calatrava ref. 3484 that I bought it for a special occasion. Read on to find out what that special occasion was and to read more news about Monochrome.

I have been looking to get a dot.com ever since the beginning, however the owner of monochrome.com didn’t want to relinquish that domain. So the search went on and in a few weeks we’ll be migrating monochrome-watches.com to monochrome-watches.com. And there will be more, like a new video page, a web shop, loads of reviews (really, a LOT) and we’ll start with our own videos. So we hope that you like these new developments and if you have ideas, suggestions, comments, please don’t hesitate and share them with us.

Just a few weeks ago I bought this vintage Patek. It was actually a spur of the moment kind of thing, because I wasn’t looking for a small old Calatrava. If someone told me that I would we wearing a 34mm watch, I would have laughed. So when the shop owner showed it to me I immediately fell in love with it. The sheer perfection, the simplicity, the purity and than to think about how complicated the movement is. Inside ticks Patek’s in-house caliber 23-300 that features both an over-coil hairspring and a free-sprung Gyromax balance. The other day I put this 53 year old watch on a Witschi watch tester and it out-performed literally every other watch that was tested that day.

Before I tell you for which occasion I bought the Calatrava, I’ll need to say that you won’t see a new article on Monochrome until I come back from my honeymoon. I promised mrs. Monochrome that I would stay clear from my laptop for the coming week, so we’ll be enjoying a full week of relaxation, astonishing old buildings/ruins, great wines and delicious food in the beautiful city of Rome. Until then… we’ll you know for which occasion I bought that lovely old Patek…