This is the Carl F. Bucherer Patravi DayDate, a new model for 2012.

The Patravi portfolio is a collection of very fine timepieces – dapper and somewhat harmonious.  Harmonious? – Well the Patravi ChronoDate and Patravi TravelTec are distinguishable by their rounded cases and complimentary round subdials …… the superb Patravi EvoTec DayDate has a generous cushion-shaped case, its curvaceous shape reciprocated on the perfectly proportioned little small seconds and date window, also cushion-shaped.  The Patravi DayDate 2012 is a synthesis of forms, featuring both a rounded case and cushion-shaped indications.

So is this valiant departure a cleverly contrasting composition or dastardly dial discordance?  Perhaps you think than simply merging the two forms is hardly brave.  Maybe not – but it is adventurous.  This is an industry in which a little nip or tuck on the designer’s sketch pad can unleash a torrent of poor publicity, where something as simple as beefing-up a bezel or lengthening a lug can produce cyclonic criticism.  Thankfully it all works perfectly – this timepiece is as devilishly handsome as its predecessors, and the Patravi DayDate collection remains reassuringly “dud-free”.

Followers of the Carl F. Bucherer brand will already know that their first manufacure calibre, the CFB A1000 was launched at BaselWorld 2008 to great acclaim, uniquely it featured a bi-directional oscillating weight, which enabled a superb view of the movement normally found only with a manually wound calibre.  At the time, it was evident that this innovative calibre would have development possibilities for the future, and indeed, the new Patravi DayDate is powered by an evolution of the CFB A1000 – the A1001.

On the dial the hour and minute hands are chunky and reminiscent of weaponry.  The big date window and the day of the week aperture on the left leave ample dial space for the Carl F. Bucherer name, re-instated under the direction of Jörg Bucherer.  There are subtle details too – the fine chapter ring, the silvered markers taking the place of numerals – except for the perfect little “60″ on the small seconds dial, and the lining of the strap which picks up the red of the brand’s logo.

The Carl F. Bucherer Patravi DayDate for 2012 is housed in a 42.6mm stainless steel case and is presented on a black calfskin leather strap.

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Carl F. Bucherer and the Rinspeed UC?

The  Carl F. Bucherer Manero Moonphase

Carl F. Bucherer – A History of the Brand

Popularity: 3% [?]

If there was a checklist of essential features for a classically styled watch then the Carl F. Bucherer Manero Moonphase would more than meet the requirements.  It is the correct size at 38mm, even a millimetre or two larger would simply ruin the proportions; it has  an 18 carat gold case polished to perfection; the dial is silvered with tapering gold markers and eyelash slim hands and the sapphire crystal is domed -  an impeccable example of an elegantly turned out gentleman’s timepiece.  The perfectly positioned moonphase indicator at six o’clock is simply the icing on the horological cake of this superb watch.

The days of the month are displayed around the dial centre, indicated by a chubby little golden arrow.  The day and month windows are located beneath the Carl F. Bucherer brand name, proudly re-instated under the direction of Jörg Bucherer just over ten years ago.  Inside is the automatic CFB 1966 movement with 42 hours of power reserve.

Carl F. Bucherer founded his watch business in 1888 alongside his wife Luise.  Since then the company has managed to remain an independent family business producing unique and beautiful, technically superb timepieces.  The Carl F. Bucherer Manero Moonphase comes presented on a Louisiana alligator strap with 18 carat gold pin buckle.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Carl F. Bucherer present the Patravi EvoTec PowerReserve.  The Lucerne-based brand unveiled their innovative automatic Calibre CFB A1000 at Baselworld 2008 and this acclaimed movement forms the basis of the latest release.

The movement is the product of Carl F. Bucherer Technologies SA (CFBT) whose workshop in Sainte-Croix consists of a small but clearly highly skilled team, and the Calibre CFB A1000 will, we feel, form the basis of many more new releases such are its development possibilities.

The CFB A1000 has as (one of …) its most interesting features a bi-directional oscillating weight which is peripherally mounted enabling an unobstructed view of the movement, compared to the usual centrally mounted rotor.  To prevent the rotor being displaced a patented shock absorbing system  was developed using carbon coated rollers filled with ultra durable ball bearings and mountings which are sprung mounted onto rocking bars.

Carl F. Bucherer Patravi EvoTec PowerReserve

The EvoTec PowerReserve, the latest piece in the Patravi collection is powered by an updated version of this movement – the CFB A1002 which features the addition of a power reserve indicator displayed at the 3 o’clock position using a retro style curved aperture which reads High to Low.

Cushion shaped cases often add an impression of size to a piece and this one, available in stainless steel or rose gold is already a generous 43.75 x 44.5mm. Subsidiary seconds are displayed at the 6 o’clock in a harmonious little cushion shaped dial, large date aperture is at the upper left of the dial with day of the week at the 9 o’clock position.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Wow! This is a little story which is hard to pass! Maybe you know that in Switzerland all forms of motor racing are actually outlawed and so, instead of guys retiring to the garage/potting shed at night to put another five hours into the ‘project’ muscle car, rally car or whatever, their Swiss counterpart retires to his shed and some time later emerges with something completely bonkers. One of these Swiss garagistes is a chap named Frank M. Rinderknecht, and he is the owner and automotive visionary behind Rinspeed, maker of actual working concept cars which are unconventional to say the very least!

In his latest creation, he has worked with longtime friends at the watchmaker Carl F Bucherer to integrate a stripped-back skeletonized dashboard clock in the instrument cluster.

However, it would probably be best to become a little more familiar with Mr Rinderknecht’s company at this point, so please forgive my indulgence as I show you some of his previous creations before getting to the kernel of this article.

This first little number is called the Rinspeed Splash

Driving the Rinspeed Splash

The Rinspeed Splash gets wet...

.....and for the party piece!

Then there was the Rinspeed sQuba….

The Rinspeed sQuba

Any ideas.....???

.....well what else would you expect??

So now we know a little about the mindset of Mr Frank M. Rinderknecht, you won’t be overly surprised to learn that his latest creation can travel through time!!! Well ok, perhaps that’s still a little ambitious, even for this guy, although with the brain reservoir behind the Large Hadron Collider based nearby at the CERN facility it would have to be a possibility sometime in the future!!

Well in fact on this occasion Rinspeed have produced a vehicle which looks like a small version of the Smart car – which isn’t exactly big to start with… The new Rinspeed UC? (yes, that’s it folks – including the ‘?’) is the ultimate city bee. And perhaps it’s not as wacky as one would have come to expect from the company’s past travails.

The Rinspeed UC?

The UC? you see (sorry) has been designed today but with designs on it’s integration into urban infrastructures of the future – although some aspects might not need to be so far away.

The little joystick-operated 2.6m electric UC? is designed to be self-loaded by the driver quickly and easily onto specially designed railway wagons so the cars can park side by side, their batteries hooked up to onboard charging stations so as to arrive at their destination fully charged, while the driver relaxing in their seat or visiting the restaurant car as the train takes them into the city where disembarkation is as simple as loading and the little car can slip into the centre traffic. There’s some forward thinking there you’d have to say!

At the Hauptbanhof

What else? Well, it’s fully web-enabled so booking that train space can be done en-route using VoIP online communications sytems.

Here’s a little of what Rinspeed themselves have to say….

“The goal is to create a new mobility concept that integrates individual car ownership and public transportation. A transverse loading system using custom railcars allows loading and unloading of numerous “UC?” vehicles simultaneously and in a very short time. Train passages are booked and reserved online directly from the vehicle. Harman International provides the permanent 3G internet connection as well as marvelous sound on wheels. VoIP2Car technology provides IP telephone service, video chat, video conferences, e-mail and many more features in the “UC?”.

UC? Joystick and Instruments

Integrated charging stations on board the custom railcars ensure that upon arrival at the destination the “UC?” battery is once again fully charged for maximum operating range. During the train trip drivers can visit the train restaurant, use any of the other train amenities or spend time in the privacy of their cars.

With this mobility concept Rinspeed elegantly circumvents the obstacle of limited operating range that so far has kept many interested parties from switching to zero-emission vehicles.  As Frank M. Rinderknecht sees it: “I can make more efficient use of my time than spending it driving on a boring highway. I’d rather visit the train restaurant or retreat to work in my car.” The Swiss visionary is already in discussions with international railroad companies about his new mobility concept.”

So, do you remember some time ago I mentioned that Carl F Bucherer were in some way connected here? Well in fact the relationship between Rinspeed and Carl F Bucherer goes back some way with the watchmaker being a backer of the car creator for some years.

Among the cluster of instruments which sprout out of the dash screen bezel in the new Rinspeed UC? is mounted a Carl F Bucherer skeletonized hand-wound Werk M1000 dashboard ‘clock’.

I know that the Bucherer dashboard clock link is relevant to our horologic theme, but perhaps it’s a wee bit tenuous in this case as all you’ve seen here today are silly cars, but I’ve always thought that Rinspeed were wonderfully ‘out there’ since first seeing their cars and any excuse to write about them is one I’ll jump at.

Carl F Bucherer Werk M1000

And maybe you think it all looks a bit mad, but if the future’s going to be about new energy solutions, it wouldn’t be a bad old world if the eccentric and self-influenced creations of Frank M. Rinderknecht found their way onto the streets of Europe’s city centres.

Frank Rinderknecht

You should really pop over to the Rinspeed website for many more amazing cars.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Carl F. Bucherer watch

At The Watch Press we take great satisfaction from bringing to your attention, some watch brands whose representation, although being available through their network of dealers worldwide, are not so heavily marketed so as to lose most of their exclusivity, mystique and personality. It is an obvious fact to state that almost any product which is mass produced is not going to carry the same exclusivity as one which is produced individually and without a client profile database to reference.

And so we come to the watches produced by the Bucherer family manufacture, which today bears the name of its founder, Carl F Bucherer.

The Bucherer name first appeared over the doorway of Carl F Bucherer, jeweller and watchmaker of distinction, in the centre of the cosmopolitan Swiss city of Lucerne in 1888. Established as a family business along with his wife Luise – herself an astute and focussed business woman, the new business would soon benefit from both the constant stream of international visitors, travellers and tourists who were drawn to the charms of the breathtaking vistas and features of the beautiful city and its’ surrounds, as well as from the quality of the craftsmanship and the level of professionalism which were on offer at the ‘magasin’ Bucherer. An international reputation for fine timepieces and jewellery was establishing its’ first footings.

The cornerstone for the protracted lifeline of the company was to be found in the dynamic husband and wife partnership and the sense of strength in the family business. Building up a network among other successful professionals locally through their enthusiastic involvement in charities, sharing with those less fortunate the benefit of their acumen and drive which would see the establishment of a charity shop in the city, Carl-Friedrich and Luise Bucherer advanced their business at the same time as becoming popular, conscientious and hard-working philanthropic members of Lucerne society.

With continuity and self-governance of the successful business in mind, the couples’ two sons, Carl-Eduard and Ernst, were inducted into the family company. Both men had followed their parents’ passion and, having travelled and worked internationally and learned their respective trades as goldsmith and watchmaker, set about expanding the business which bore their fathers’ name.

Bucherer Company logo c.1900

Following the bleak years of the Great War, with the business operation now consolidated and the footings for continuity in place, the company C. Bucherer was formally established in 1919.

To coincide with the official launch of the company, a collection of ladies wristwatches was unveiled bearing the C. Bucherer name. This was the first Bucherer collection and reflected the changing direction of watch design. Up until this era, most watches had been manufactured as pocket watches, as it was believed that such fine and delicate instruments should be protected from the elements – and envious, unscrupulous eyes! The popularity of the new, modern wristwatch was on the rise as the Bucherer watches were announced.

The new collection represented the Bucherer skills traits of high quality watchmaking and contemporary jewellery design. One element of this lay in the fact that the wristwatch did not possess the same constraints of the pocket watch and the case did not have to be round, which allowed for a much broader design scope.

From the first Bucherer collection

The distinctive styling and attention to detail exhibited in the collection led to a rapid rise in prominence for the new watchmaker and within a year C Bucherer were unveiling another selection of exquisite ladies watches.

As the 1920s roared past, so the style, quality and individuality now associated with the C Bucherer watch helped elevate the status of the family-run watchmaker to the highest levels, and demand for their watches at home in Lucerne and abroad meant that the decade saw Bucherer production at record levels.

The Twenties also saw the innovative spirit of the Patron reach out into the manufacture of timepieces which were specifically designed to cater for the growth of the motor car. A large, dashboard-mounted manual-winding watch with eight-day power reserve proved the versatility of the Bucherer company, and a canny eye for opportunity.

Bucherer Automobile Eight Days

1933 brought sad news in the announcement of the death of the founder Carl Friedrich Bucherer (b.1865). His two sons, by now long since returned to Lucerne to oversee the spectacular growth of their fathers’ business, took exclusive control of the company, becoming a public listed company and calling in their extensive network of contacts abroad to open more branches overseas.

Having created beautiful ladies wristwatches for some years, under the new stewardship of Carl-Eduard and Ernst Bucherer the company also began to manufacture watches for men. Their post-war chronograph and big date watches were an immediate hit with the sporting type, and in true Bucherer form, not only were the watches functional, they also bore the attention to styling which had previously been a signature of the early collections. A Bucherer watch was a very desirable item indeed.

1948 Big Date Chronograph Incabloc

Following the hostilities of war, thousands of returning US servicemen passed through Switzerland and many Bucherer watches found their way across the Atlantic which inadvertently would raise the profile of the brand in the United States.

Some years later, in 1964, Bucherer had a tremendous PR boost when US President Richard Nixon, on a state visit, paid a visit to the Lucerne shop and left as the owner of a new Bucherer Chronometer!

1967 began with the acquisition of the respected Credo manufacture of chronometer movements and by the following year, Bucherer chronometer watches were leaving the production facility at a rate of 15,000 pieces a year, seconded in volume only to Rolex and Omega!

The 1975 Bucherer Chronometer

When the quartz wave crashed over the Swiss mechanical watch industry at the end of the sixties and through the seventies, Bucherer were in a strong position, having joined forces with ten other watchmaking companies as the Centre for Electronic Watchmaking way back in 1962, to develop the famed Beta-21 quartz movement, which would end up powering the watches of no less than 15 different manufacturers!

Bucherer quartz with Beta-21 movement

Armed with the Beta-21, Bucherer continued to produce stylish watches, without losing ground to their larger competitiors and instead of playing catch-up, the marque enjoyed strong growth in this period. Crucially, Bucherer had also continued to produce high quality mechanical watches throughout the era of quartz dominance when other manufactures, large and small, who had turned their backs on the new, cheap upstart quartz watch, suddenly found themselves completely out of touch with the groundswell of demand and embroiled in a battle for survival – in which many would fall from their pedestals and crumble.

The company moved into its’ third generation of family involvement in 1976 with the announcement that Jörg Bucherer would assume the running of the business, which over the following years would evolve into the Bucherer Group. Today he remains the owner.

As the 1990s saw a gradual swing back to the mechanical wristwatch by the growing numbers of enthusiasts, who were prepared to invest in a watch for more than their ability to tell the time, once again Bucherer quickly stepped up to the mark with innovative creations which included multiple complications such as the Archimedes Perpetual Calendar, which uniquely featured the ability to set each function through the single crown.

Bucherer Archimedes Perpetual Calendar

Under the direction of Jörg Bucherer the family marque saw in the new century with a significant company rebrand. For the first time in eighty years, the name of the founder, Carl F Bucherer, would adorn the watches as the company moved into the new millennium.

The rebranding was much more than an exercise in change for changes sake. Carl F Bucherer as a brand was to place an emphasis on the technical innovation and watchmaking ability of the company as a manufacture, the status afforded to those companies who designed and built complicated movements from scratch.

New models were presented at the major watch fairs, such as BaselWorld, to glowing reviews, and little wonder either. The watches produced by the Carl F Bucherer manufacture are distinctive, attractive, functional, complicated and as individual as any watches ever made by the family company.

The Carl F Bucherer Patravi T-Graph

A Carl F Bucherer wristwatch says so much more about its owner than just being a symbol of success or wealth sometimes associated with other larger brands. Owning one of these watches displays personality traits which could be found in the man himself, for he too was not one to follow the herds, his vision not simply to produce and sell. As a true philanthropist who saw the value in giving, he also gave his customers something above the ordinary, something special which also gives back to its’ owner the comforting sense of wearing a watch which combines technical excellence with classic design.

It’s been quite a remarkable journey for a family company, but clearly Carl Friedrich and Luise Bucherer, were remarkable people who were ably represented by their own kin through successive generations.

If you’re not overly familiar with Carl F Bucherer, you really should be finding out more…..

Popularity: 27% [?]