The watch that Breguet made, was for Marie Antoinette.
Although she didn't live to see it, Breguet completed the task of creating the watch that included all of his best inventions and techniques.
Only the best materials would be used: gold, platium, crystal, rubies and saphires.
I wonder what she would have thought, in fact, I wonder what I would think if I were to ever see it in real life. For now the watch sits in a case and for various reasons, I don’t think I will be seeing it anytime soon.
It’s too stressful anyway, the fact that it is all these things, the most and the best.
I like my own version better, my Marie Antoinette Swatch, so I call it. My little clear plastic time piece.
It’s from 1999, and in sync with an era where transparency was on-trend. One of blow up furniture and clear plastic technology.
I wonder what Marie Antoinette would have thought of that, although I suppose that it doesn’t really matter.
It’s afternoon slump time for me here in Los Angeles. I just finished the last bit of the coffee I made this morning, which had gone cold and been re-warmed at least twice. My computer bar reminds me that it’s after 11pm by you. But I think I’ve been working across these two time zones—GMT and PST—for so long now that I already know in my gut what time it is in London at any given moment. Still, I use this little free app just in case my brain and body aren’t up to doing the math automatically.
I have a story to tell you about a very special timekeeping object—a vintage clock that has become something of an ongoing project for me—but I’ll save that for tomorrow. My tomorrow, that is. Which will be when your tomorrow will already be ending.
The above app is called Clocker, by the way. And it’s in the ‘productivity’ category of the App Store.
I just looked up the developer, someone called Abhishek Banthia, an, 'iOS engineer working out of the Bay Area.’ A fellow Californian. Their webpage starts with a blog post from earlier this month about the TV show ‘Friends’:
https://abhishekbanthia.com/
So I’m glad to know that Abhishek
isn’t too fixated on being productive all of the time.
We've already changed clocks here but you won't until this weekend. So there are two weeks when we are an hour closer together.
This is my mother's night table, with her alarm clock and her watches. These aren't the watches I think of when I think of her wrist, though. The watch that I remember her wearing had a small, black face with gold marks at just the 12, 3, 6, and 9 (or maybe only at the 12?) and a thin, braided gold rim. It had a narrow black leather strap. I believe that watch broke and it was expensive to have it repaired so she just stopped wearing it. But that watch is still in my parents' safe deposit box. I hope my dad doesn't get rid of it, even though it's broken. In my mind, that will always be the watch that she wore.