Independents

vernon
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H.Moser & Cie - notes from an encounter!

I had the pleasure to meet Mr Daniel Zimmerman from Moser (Director sales & marketing) a couple of weeks ago in their London dealer's showroom. It was a fantastic opportunity to chat with him, hear a little about Moser and see some wonderful watches.

The first thing I noticed was that Daniel was wearing a platinum Henry with a lovely greyish ruthenium dial which he happily took off for me to look at. This watch definately looks much better in the metal than it does in pictures. The display back glass is beautifully concave so it sits very well on the wrist and through it can be seen the double hairspring or, more properly the 'Straumann Double Hairspring Escapement Module' which is a fascinating bit of horology. This is exactly what it says, an escapement with two counter-acting hairsprings but if you think about this it's an amazing achievement as the springs have to be exactly matched. There was an article in a recent edition of QP which looked at this.

This double hairspring escapement will only feature in two Moser watches for the present, the Henry and the new Mayu model in Palladium which was the next watch Daniel showed me. This has a most captivating dial, described perfectly in it's name - 'fume'. It's a sort of graduated sunburst smokey colour. Their supplier apparently calls it degrade (french for uneven - sorry the accents are missing!) but this doesn't translate well, hence 'fume' which I think is a perfect description.

The palladium Mayu was originally to have a different dial and be a limited production watch but this is now to be part of their regular line. I think this is also a good example of Moser's passion - they wouldn't release this watch until they were happy they had got the dial right - they have! Daniel also had a new version of the white gold Mayu to show me which now has a rhodie dial. I think this looked absolutley fantastic! I have an early Mayu with the white lacquer dial which I love - but this new dial is superb on this watch. The quality is excellent and whilst clean and classical in it's design this gives it a sort of 'engineered' aspect too. There were also jewelled versions of the Mayu with mother of pearl dials - called 'Black Pearl' and 'White Pearl'.

Then the main event as Daniel produced a tray with the now almost legendary Moser Perpetual 1. I have to stress that only one of these watches is an actual working example though! Daniel demonstrated the 'flash' calendar whereby the date changes instantly and directly from the last day of the month (be it 28th, 29th, 30th or 31st) DIRECTLY to the 1st without showing the invalid dates in between. If that is'nt enough, Daniel demonstrated that it also works backwards too - Amazing!!! This really is an amazing watch - the simplicity of the Strehler design belies what complication lies within! The case is beautiful too. It maintains the same basic design features as my more humble Mayu but introduces a wonderful third dimension of complex curves making this larger watch still sits extremely well on the wrist. This too has a convex display back helping it to curve round the wrist.

First deliveries of the Perpetual 1 should commence in October but I know that Moser want to get this very complicated watch right. They're never going to be mass production I guess! Moser are taking on more watch makers to steadily increase production and ensure they maintain the quality they want. They now have a total staff of 50 and growing. I have to note that I believe the quality and finishing of the watches I saw recently is definately better than the early production examples I saw last year - not to give †he impression they were'nt pretty good too though, they're just getting even better!

As you can probably tell, I'm entusiatic about Moser. I've had my Mayu for a year now and had no problems at all. I think this is a brand worth following - they have some wonderful watches with unique movements and some great innovations, offer good value, excellent customer service and they care about what they do and about getting it right! What's more, they're nice people. Good luck to them.

[Edited for paragraphs]