Ein Wochenende in Basel (A Weekend in Basel)

I planned to attend a couple of major festivals during my stay in Europe and BaselWorld was near the top of my list. For those not familiar with BaselWorld, it is the largest trade show of the watch and jewelry industry (although watches dominate the show). The show has become large enough that every reasonably-priced hotel in Basel was fully booked several months in advance, so I relied on AirBnB to book a place to stay for this trip. I ended up booking an apartment in Lörrach, a small town in Germany just east of the border with France and just north of the border with Switzerland.

The itinerary was to spend one day attending BaselWorld and the other day exploring the city of Basel.

Day 1

Watchmaking combines the art of making an attractive fashion accessory for the wrist with the science of crafting an accurate instrument to measure time. While the casual observer normally focuses on the artistic side of this endeavour, the true beauty of a watch comes from within, from the precise engineering that has gone into designing and constructing a mechanical movement that, without any electronic assistance, using only gears and springs, can track time to within +/-12 seconds/day (or even better) and keep itself powered from the movement of the wearer, all within a watch case around 40mm in diameter. The new dimension to all of this is the business side; some brands are clearly better at marketing than others, and this became apparent at the convention.

BaselWorld is basically divided into five pavilions. The first pavilion contains the well-known global brands spread across three floors, with the high end brands on the first floor (Patek Philippe, Rolex, Tag Heuer and the Swatch group of Omega, Longine, Tissot, etc.), the less expensive fashion-focused brands on the second floor (Bulova, Emporio Armani, Hermes, Citizen, etc.), and the lower end brands on the third floor (Guess, Festina, Casio, etc.). There were some exceptions to floor assignment, probably because of size constraints, but there was a general pattern there.

It seemed like in recent years, Omega had focused most of their marketing on their Seamaster collection (the watch of the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig versions of James Bond). However, at this year's BaselWorld, the marketing clearly shifted back to their Speedmaster, the first watch worn on the moon. Omega built a separate display room just for the Speedmaster series, although the lighting didn't do the watches any justice.

Tissot has the advantage of being part of the same company as Omega and Longines, so they were able to have an exhibit located right next to their pricier counterparts. 

Tissot's latest innovation announced this year was a solar powered version of their T-Touch tactile sports watches (with the built-in compass and altimeter). However, they also exhibited the wide range of other watches they've developed over the past few years and I found that they still displayed several versions of the Automatic III, including the one that I have for daily wear (the T065.430.11.051.00, pictured). It may not be a luxury watch, but it's a good value for a Swiss-made mechanical watch with sapphire crystals at the front and back.

I was glad to see Frederique Constant on the first floor. They are a relatively new company but they deserve the extra attention for the elegant designs of some of their watches. Granted, they have their share of hideous watches, but so does nearly every company. If you want some examples, Bloomberg wrote an article on the ugliest watches of this year's BaselWorld (Frederique Constant's gaudy Love watches did not make the list).

Smartwatches are the latest trend in electronics, and I was interested in seeing how the mechanically-focused watchmaking industry would react. It turned out that there were only a few brands that released smartwatches at this year's BaselWorld, one of them being Frederique Constant's Horological Smartwatch. It's a (mostly) mechanical watch with a transmitter that sends basic motion data to your smartphone, primarily for tracking how long you sleep and how much you move around during the day.

Emporio Armani had the best designed exhibit, relying on a bank vault theme. The interior looked like a room full of safety deposit boxes, with some boxes sliding out to display the latest watch models. Photos were not allowed inside, which was strange seeing as how none of their watches were noteworthy anyway.

Seiko announced their latest innovation of the first solar powered GPS watch: the Astron. This model had a mother of pearl dial, which is better suited (but underutilized) for jewelry watches rather than sports watches.

Maurice Lacroix is not well known compared to the other mass market brands on the second floor of the main pavilion, but they upped their marketing game by becoming the official watchmaker of FC Barcelona and designing a different watch for each of about a dozen of their key players. Funny how after the handball incident at the 2010 World Cup, and three separate biting incidents in the Dutch Eredivisie, English Premier League and 2014 World Cup, I see Luis Suarez promoting more products than almost any other athlete.

A watch show is not complete without the Rolex Submariner. I'm not sure if it was deliberate or not, but several watch brands used low frequency lighting in their exhibits, which caused vertical striping in all of the digital photos that were taken. Press photographers were allowed private viewings with close-up shots.



The second pavilion contained the lesser known watch brands. The first thing that I noticed was that while the first pavilion (especially the first floor) was crowded with tourists, press and jewelry store purchasers, the second pavilion was quiet and sparsely attended. I took some time to see as many of these brands as I could, hoping to find a great watch that only an aficionado would know about, but I found that most of the watches used derivative designs and most of their movements were quartz. For the few brands that had more original designs, I decided to take some pictures, only to have a sales rep immediately approach me hoping to make a big sale. Each one seemed visibly disappointed to find out that I wasn't a purchaser. Aside from my running shoes, I was dressed business casual, which I guess raised the hopes of a few salesmen.


One independent watchmaker takes various Van Gogh paintings and prints them on the watch dial. More art than science in this case, but at least they picked a great artist.

The third pavilion contained primarily jewelry manufacturers, so I skipped that section. The fourth pavilion contained watch retailers from Hong Kong on one floor and Thailand on another floor, as well as watchmaking equipment companies in the basement. I was short on time so I only quickly browsed through these areas.

 

The fifth pavilion is the most exciting part of BaselWorld, as it contains a few high end independent watchmakers who try to be on the cutting edge in complicated mechanical watches. Three years ago, HYT came out with hydro-mechanical watches, which were displayed again this year, but there were no huge developments for 2015 (although there were still a lot of very interesting watches on display).

 

If I had to pick a watch of the show, it would be Cecil Purnell's V17 World Time Bi-Axial Tourbillon. Several luxury brands are now designing their world time watches to display the world time using a rotating polar view of the Earth, but Cecil Purnell took it one step further by using a rotating three dimensional half-sphere, with dimensions proportional to the tourbillon just below it. Only ten of these were made so I can't imagine what the price must be to cover the design and production costs.

So BaselWorld was a lot of fun, and physically demanding as I was lugging a lot of product catalogs and free watch magazines throughout the day. The only disappointing part is that even with the hundreds of companies that attended, there were some great brands that were not present. Both Jaegre Lecoultre and Baume & Mercier are brands that I can see at Galéries Lafayette here in Paris, but they were not at the show. A.Lange & Söhne was also absent and they are arguably one of the world's best watchmakers.

Anyways, it was hard to take any great photos of the watches, with all of the bright lights and thick security glass, so if you want to see some better pictures of various watches from the show, here are some links to other articles on this year's BaselWorld:
Gear Patrol
A Blog To Watch
Bloomberg


Day 2

Since Lörrach is right at the southwest tip of the Black Forest, I spent the morning strolling to the east side of the town to at least catch a glimpse. I wasn't sure when I'd be in southwest Germany again, so I might as well take a quick look.

At the southwest edge of the Black Forest, overlooking the town of Lörrach.

I had a few hours before my flight back to Paris, so I managed to take in a few of the sites around Basel. While the city is small and doesn't have a lot to offer for sightseeing, it was very clean and quiet, reminding me a lot of Luxembourg.

The front of Basler Münster (Basel Minster). Sightseers were discouraged from entering as there was a Sunday service in session.

The Tinguely-Brunnen, or Tinguely Fountain, contains mechanical sculptures spraying water in every which way.

The Rathaus Basel, or Basel Town Hall. The interior is small but contains a well designed courtyard.

The weather was still too cold for any plants to have bloomed at the Botanischer Garten der Universität Basel, but there were four large greenhouses containing active plants from tropical, desert and temperate climates.

The Spalentor, or Gate of Spalen, a former city gate of the ancients walls of Basel. It looked out of place surrounded by the modern buildings and traffic of the city.

So that was Basel in a weekend. On account of BaselWorld, the local football team (FC Basel) was scheduled for an away match so I did not get to see them, which is too bad because they are the top team in Switzerland.

I'll also mention that while Switzerland was the tenth country that I've visited since moving to Europe, it was the first country I visited that did not use the Euro. However, I was still able to pay in Euros at some shops. My next trip is England for the Easter weekend, so details will be posted in another week or so.