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The Grand Prix de l'Horlogerie de Geneve - the world's finest watches recognized

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The 2011 Laureates represent the most remarkable examples of bespoke technology ever assembled. They cost as much as a Ferrari, and Grand Prix analogy is very relevant, only the watches are equally as complex
One of the Sports Watch finalists, the CHF 44,500 Harry Winston Project Z6 Black Edition
2011 Aiguille d'Or 2011 winner - the CHF 80,000 (US$87,000) De Bethune DB28
The winner of the Design Watch Category, the CHF 87,000 Urwerk UR-110.
The public's choice was the Audemars Piguet Millenary 4101
Van Cleef And Arpels' Lady Arpels Polar Landscape seal decor
The winner of the Best Sports Watch, the Tag Heuer MIKROTIMER Flying 1000 Chronograph measures time to one thousandth of a second.
The Best Complicated Watch Prize went to the Zenith Academy Christophe Colomb Equation of Time. At $240,000, it might cost as much as the average house, but it is a triumph of innovation.
Dame nominee - Louis_Vuitton_TambourSpinTimeFemme
One of the finalists in the Design Watch category, the CHF 94,500 Eva Leube Ari
One of the finalists in the Design Watch Category, the CHF 220,000 Hautlence HL2.2
Hermès' Arceau Le Temps suspendu is an interesting concept, in that the owner can "suspend time" by pressing on the pusher, at which point the sweep of the seconds, minutes and hours are suspended and the date indicator disappears.
Dame nominee Piaget_G0A36156
The winning Ladies watch for 2011 is the CHF 73'900 Boucheron Hathi Crazy Jungle
The winner of the Petit Aiguille Award, and quite possibly the most relevant watch of all the winners in that it was judged the best watch under CHF 5000 - the Montblanc Star Worldtime GMT Automatic
Close up of the "Aiguille d'Or" Grand Prix winning watch
The specifications of the DB28 model by De Bethune.
One of the Ladies watch nominees, the CHF 58,400 Pink Gold Premier Large Chronograph by Harry Winston
One of the Ladies watch nominees, the ChanelChromatic 38mm
One of the Ladies watch nominees, the CHF 180,000 Bovet Fleurier Red Gold Recital
One of the Ladies watch nominees, the CHF 53,500 Chaumet Bee My Love
One of the Ladies watch nominees, the CHF 525,000 Graff Superstar 38mm
One of the Ladies watch nominees, the CHF 25,000 Excalibur Lady Pink Gold, Set with Diamonds , by Roger Dubuis
One of the Ladies watch nominees, the CHF 67,500 Louis Vuitton Spin Time.
One of the Ladies watch nominees, the CHF 36,900 Hublot Big Bang Leopard
One of the Ladies watch nominees, the CHF 37,000
Most watch connoisseurs would recognise the origins of the DB28 in an instant as some of De Bethune's classic designs and signature features are clearly evident
The De Bethune DB28 - winner of the "Aiguille d'Or" Grand Prix
The De Bethune DB28 - winner of the "Aiguille d'Or" Grand Prix
Hermes' Arceau Le Temps suspendu is a new take on the 33-year-old Arceau design
Hermes' Arceau Le Temps suspendu
The winner of the Design Watch Category, the CHF 87,000 Urwerk UR-110.
The TAG Heuer timeline of very accurate mechanical watches
The mechanism of TAG Heuer's winning sports watch
The original Heuer creation of 1916 which was the first timepiece to record hundredths of seconds
The Patek Philippe Museum
The winner of the Design Watch Category, the CHF 87,000 Urwerk UR-110.
The winner of the Best Complicated Watch Prize, the Zenith Academy Christophe Colomb Equation of Time
The 2011 Laureates represent the most remarkable examples of bespoke technology ever assembled. They cost as much as a Ferrari, and Grand Prix analogy is very relevant, only the watches are equally as complex
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The marketplace is an extraordinary thing. Watchmakers could quite conceivably go the same way as blacksmiths with the advent of the mobile phone. With two thirds of the world's population carrying a mobile phone (up from zero two decades ago) and penetration quickly heading for ubiquity, the only genuinely functional aspect of the wristwatch - telling the time - has effectively already been replaced.

Yet the personal chronometer is still alive and well and in ruddy good health.

After the global financial crisis of 2009, no-one would have been surprised if the world world watch market had continued its downward trend into the same death spiral that has seen dozens of other more recent and technologically adept marketplaces succumb to the advances of digital technology.

Instead, it has rebounded magnificently and is expected to reach US$46.65 billion this year. That means the value of all the watches sold in the world this year is roughly three times greater than the value of all the tablet computers (i.e. Apple iPads, Samsung Galaxy Tab, et al.) sold and just short of the amount of money the Business Software Alliance claims is lost through software piracy globally each year.

Not only is the watch far from dead, it still commands a massive global marketplace and the largest share by total dollar value of the watch market is the luxury watch segment.

The watch is now almost exclusively a fashion accessory, a not-always-subtle pointer to one's financial wellbeing that is ideal for the nouveau riche to display their new found wealth. Hence the growing wealth of the BRIC countries is driving the luxury watch market to new levels.

Grand Prix de l'Horlogerie de Genève

Two days ago, the luxury watch industry held its annual equivalent to the Oscars - the Grand Prix de l'Horlogerie de Genève (Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix) - which recognizes the most outstanding watches from the previous year in a dozen categories. With this premier event on the international watchmaking calendar now in its eleventh year, even being recognized in the preselection prior to the nomination of the final three in each category is an incredible honor in this world of mechanical mastery. In the months preceding the awards ceremony, the watches nominated by the jury were exhibited in Zurich, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Geneva.

Though a dozen winners were awarded by the jury on Saturday night, there is one very special award for the best timepiece of the year - the "Aiguille d'Or". This year, the award went to the DB28 model by De Bethune.

All the prize-winning and nominated watches will now go on show at the Salon International de l'Horlogerie de Prestige Belles Montres, which will be held at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris from November 24 to 27.

This year's Laureates of the Grand Prix de l'Horlogerie de Genève are:

"Aiguille d'Or" Grand Prix: De Bethune DB28

Close up of the "Aiguille d'Or" Grand Prix winning watch

Most watch connoisseurs would recognize the origins of the DB28 in an instant as some of De Bethune's classic designs and signature features are clearly evident - the spherical moon, blued steel, silicon/platinum balance wheel, triple pare-chute shock-absorbing system and the company's "floating lugs" which adjust to the size of the wearer's wrist and its movements.

The DB28 is exceptionally light, with its case made entirely of titanium. The moon's phases are displayed by means of a platinum and blued steel sphere revolving on its axis and are accurate to one day every 122 years.

The DB28 is powered by Calibre DB 2009 mechanical hand‐wound movement which is equipped with an ultralight 0.18 gram silicon/titanium tourbillon. This tourbillon is the lightest on the market (classic counterparts often weigh four times as much) and comprises 50 parts, of which the lightest weighs less than 0.0001 grams and the "heaviest" 0.0276 grams!

De Bethune thus undertook to rethink the tourbillon around this new wristwatch dynamic. The laws of physics are implacable: in order to compensate for the disorganised violence of wrist movements, the carriage must be as light as possible with as high a frequency as possible and a maximum rotation speed for a minimum mass and inertia.

Thanks to new technologies, De Bethune has therefore created a 0.18 g silicon-titanium tourbillon in a carriage spinning once every thirty seconds at its axis, and a balance oscillating at a frequency of 36,000 vibrations per hour.

Best Ladies' Watch Prize: Boucheron Crazy Jungle Hathi

The winning Ladies watch for 2011 is the CHF 73'900 Boucheron Hathi Crazy Jungle

The Indian influence of Boucheron dates back more than a century, from when Louis Boucheron first visited in 1909. In 1928, the Maharajah of Patiala commissioned Boucheron to create a jewellery collection and the style is still evident to this day.

The winning womens watch in this year's Grand Prix de l'Horlogerie de Genève, the US$80,000 Boucheron Crazy Jungle Hathi, reflects the Indian influence, with the name a derivative of the Hindi word for elephant and the dial featuring a Murano aventurine glass mosaic set with 40 diamonds, plus sapphires, tsavorites, amethysts and onyx.

The subject is quite obviously an elephant, the casing and bezel are of white gold with an automatic Manufacture GP4000 caliber, and the blanket on the elephant's back contains Boucheron's "Crazy Seconds" module, which is a spinning array of lights.

Best Men's Watch Prize: Hermès Arceau Le Temps Suspendu

Hermès' Arceau Le Temps suspendu is an interesting concept, in that the owner can "suspend time" by pressing on the pusher, at which point the sweep of the seconds, minutes and hours are suspended and the date indicator disappears.

Hermès' Arceau Le Temps suspendu is a new take on the 33-year-old Arceau design and an interesting concept, in that the owner can "suspend time" by pressing on the pusher, at which point the sweep of the seconds, minutes and hours are suspended and the date indicator disappears.

At another press of the pusher, the watch resumes at the exact time, down to the second, having continued to monitor time in the background. The remarkable thing about this functionality is not so much the usefulness, but the fact the whole illusion is achieved mechanically with an ingenious system of cams, pinions and segments.

The capability is made possible by an additional module that enables the watch to alternate automatically between real and suspended time, coordinated by two synchronized column wheels, one for the hours, the other for the minutes and date. Thanks to its 360 degree hour and minute retrograde mechanism, the time stops and moves into the "Time Suspended" zone at 12 o'clock, while the date hand disappears completely.

Best Design Watch Prize: Urwerk UR-110

The winner of the Design Watch Category, the CHF 87,000 Urwerk UR-110.

Twin turbines, "Oil Change" indicator ... URWERK's description of its latest creation sounds like it should be driven, not worn on the wrist. The UR-110 continues the Swiss timepiece innovator's trend of producing off-beat displays - the time is shown by three rotating "torpedoes" mounted on planetary gears that pass down a vertical line, marked 0 to 60 minutes, on the side of the face.

Sound complicated? It's actually quite a simple to read layout and because the time can be read by looking at only the right side, you can discretely sneak a peak at your titanium masterpiece without upsetting those tiresome dinner guests.

Best Jewellery and Artistic Crafts Watch Prize: Van Cleef & Arpels Lady Arpels Polar Landscape

Van Cleef And Arpels' Lady Arpels Polar Landscape seal decor

The Lady Arpels Polar Landscape Seal decor timepiece depicts seals drying themselves in the sun. Each watch is a work of numerous craftsmen, from machinists to engravers to enamelers to stone cutters. The water is translucent enamel, the skies are turquoise enamel, the waves and clouds are mother-of-pearl, the seals are made of diamonds and the dial is enameled, engraved gold. Each watch costs US$106,300

Best Complicated Watch Prize: Zenith Academy Christophe Colomb Equation of Time

The winner of the Best Complicated Watch Prize, the Zenith Academy Christophe Colomb Equation of Time

At CHF 220,000.00 (US$240,000), you might rightfully ask what makes this watch so special, even before it had taken the prize for the most complicated watch of the year.

The reason this watch is SO complex is that the 24 hour day is a convenient average because the Earth's elliptical orbit and the inclination of its axis actually vary the length of the day by up to a quarter hour depending on the day of the year. This watch calculates all that and tells you how many minutes you should add or subtract from the time to get the real time. This will probably never be of any practical usage, and almost certainly not anywhere you'll actually be wearing a quarter of a million dollars on your wrist, but heh, you will feel good knowing that the mechanical computer on your wrist is as fine as any going around, and that only 74 other people on the planet will have one.

Best Sports Watch Prize: TAG Heuer Mikrotimer Flying 1000 Chronograph

The winner of the Best Sports Watch, the Tag Heuer MIKROTIMER Flying 1000 Chronograph measures time to one thousandth of a second.

In a world where the capabilities of a watch in terms of genuine usefulness beyond telling the time and are really only of conversational value, the TAG Heuer Mikrotimer Flying 1000 Chronograph would have been a certainty with the bookmakers for the Best Sports Watch Award.

The mechanism of TAG Heuer's winning sports watch

The Mikrotimer Flying 1000 Chronograph's claim to fame is that it is the first and only mechanical chronograph to measure and display time to one thousandth of a second. Its oscillating system vibrates at 3,600,000 beats per hour, 125 times faster then most existing chronographs.

Remarkably, it has taken almost a full century for the capture of fractions of a second to progress an order of magnitude.

The TAG Heuer timeline of very accurate mechanical watches

In 1916, Charles-Auguste Heuer launched the Mikrograph Genesis stopwatch, giving mankind the ability to measure 100ths of seconds for the first time, and not surprisingly, revolutionizing sports timekeeping into the bargain. Apart from taking a major historical milestone, the watch became the official stopwatch for the Olympic Games.

Hence the TAG Heuer Mikrotimer Flying 1000 was a shoe-in for the top sports watch, having historical significance and precedent on its side. The fact that it's now more accurate than its owners are capable of using it is of little consequence.

"Petite Aiguille" Prize (for models under CHF 5'000): Montblanc, Star Worldtime GMT Automatic

The winner of the Petit Aiguille Award, and quite possibly the most relevant watch of all the winners in that it was judged the best watch under CHF 5000 - the Montblanc Star Worldtime GMT Automatic

The winner of the Petit Aiguille Award, and quite possibly the most relevant watch of all the winners in that it was judged the best watch under CHF 5000, is the Montblanc Star Worldtime GMT Automatic.

Apart from being more affordable than most of the watches in this array of watchmaking mastery, it's capabilities are also quite possibly the most relevant to a world quickly overcoming the tyranny of distance - put simply, the Montblanc Star Worldtime GMT Automatic puts two different time zones on its dial and at the same time, indicates the time in all time zones.

It does so by purely mechanical means.

lt is hence a cosmopolitan instrument primarily for businesspeople or bankers who travel the world or who wish to keep a watchful eye on the world's stock exchanges, or when colleagues overseas might be available for a quick chat.

As can be expected from a winning watch in any category, user-friendliness is one of the key attributes of the watch. When the crown is in its neutral (unscrewed) position, turning it clockwise manually winds the automatic movement and turning it counter-clockwise resets the outer ring which indicates the world's 24 time zones.

When the crown has been withdrawn to its first extracted position, turning it clockwise resets the date and turning it counter-clockwise triggers the GMT hand (with the red tip) to advance in hourly increments.

Finally, when the crown has been further withdrawn to its second extracted position, turning it clockwise adjusts the 12-hour and the minute-hand in the usual manner.

The 12-hour hand is permanently coupled to the movement and shows the time in the wearer's present location. The smaller GMT hand culminating in a red tip is accompanied by a contrastingly colored 24 hour-scale indicating whether people are momentarily at work or asleep in the distant time zone. The outer ring simultaneously indicates the corresponding time on all the global time zones when correctly adjusted with the current time and location of the GMT hand.

At CHF 4,100 (US$4470), it's the bargain of the bunch in terms of functionality and affordability.

Special Jury Prize: Patek Philippe Museum

The Patek Philippe Museum

The Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva was awarded a special Jury Prize for good reason. Patek Philippe was founded in 1839 and during its 172 year history, has assembled a collection of watches that have left their mark on the history of horology, plus an astonishing assortment of musical automata and portrait miniatures from the 16th through to the 19th century. There's also a library dedicated entirely to horology and related subjects plus examples of nearly all of the most remarkable pocket watches and wristwatches made by the company.

Audiovisual multilingual presentations of selected masterpieces animate the exhibit and if you are ever in Geneva, the Patek Philippe museum is a time-tunnel to the beginnings of horology.

Public Prize: Audemars Piguet, Millenary 4101

The public's choice was the Audemars Piguet Millenary 4101

Each year, the public is asked to vote on the 70 watches pre-selected by the jury, with one vote per person allowed to visitors to the Geneva exhibition and internet users who visited the official Grand Prix de l'Horlogerie de Genève web site or World Tempus web site. This year Audemars Piguet's Millenary 4101 took the public prize.

The nominated watches

If you're looking for a special gift for Christmas for a (very) loved one, many of the watches above are very exclusive and very, very expensive and may not be available at relatively short notice, if at all. The list of nominated watches though, should see you being able to acquire something that is to your (their) taste.

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6 comments
JoeB
Are these the \'world\'s finest\' or the \'world\'s most expensive\' watches? A $100 Seiko keeps time as accurately and what to you buy a watch for? TO KEEP TIME!!
Some people have more money than sense...
Pks29733steel
Why waste $100 on a Seiko, look on your cell phone!
Fusiontek
There are still places and situations where a watch might be better to have then a cell phone. On a plane for example. where the phones are not allowed to be on. \"Why is telling time necessary on a plane?\" someone might ask. For example: To check to make sure they are arriving in time to catch a connecting flight or just to keep track (for whatever reason) of how long the flight is taking or how long it\'s taking to get from the terminal to takeoff. At least some of the same kinds of reasons for telling time might apply on a plane as in other situations.
Captain Danger
\"The watch is now almost exclusively a fashion accessory, a not-always-subtle pointer to one\'s financial wellbeing \" How true I wear a Timex
Hey at least \"It takes a licking and keeps on ticking\"
JoeB
Pks29733steel, I don't have a $400 cell phone to check the time on... I have phone that does nothing except send and receive phone calls... But my Seiko is still keeping perfect time after 18 years!
Babs Anthony
I prefer my Rolex over my Seiko. However, both keep time as well as the world\'s most expensive watches. JoeB, you\'re right---some people have more money than common sense.