The Vintage Watcher

Often, when designers take to designing watches, they make stupid mistakes: the hands get too short, the dials and bezels get too bejeweled, or they make them unreadable. A notable exception was Robert Lighton.  He made a foray into watches in the mid-aughts (ugh, is that what we call the first decade of the 21st century?) and released a number of watches.  He seemed to have abandoned the project by the end of the aughts (ugh), and released his remaining stock at cut-rate prices.  I don’t know why the watches weren’t that popular, I thought a number of his designs were quite good.  One of the better ones is this San Remo.  A good size at 41mm, this is a dress/businessman’s watch that is well balanced and striking.  The dial is highly legible, and I like the art deco typeface and the design of the hour hand. I like that the seconds subdial doesn’t eat up the Number 6 at the bottom, and the blued steel hands are a nice touch. All of these little touches are reminiscent of older, classic styles but still he gives it a few more modern touches.  The size for one, the stacked case design which has both a contemporary and deco look, and the addition of the crown guards, which is definitely a more modern addition. I don’t know too much about the 25-jewel Soprod movement, other than Soprod makes Swiss movements “very similar” to ETA movements, and as such are probably pretty reliable.  All the little details are here for watch fans:  Blued hands and screws, highly jeweled movement, and cote-de-geneve decorations on the movement. The only drawback is that watch seems to have no lume and is probably unreadable in the dark, but that is generally par for the course for a business/non-tool watch.  For sale on the TimeZone forum for $575 shipped, not too far from the original clearance price at Robert Lighton’s boutique.