Last weekend, the Watch2008 event has been held in the Hoogenweerth Castle in Maastricht (The Netherlands).

I attended the event on saturday, and arrived right after the opening of the first Watch2008. The Watch2008 can be seen as a watch expo for the relative small, and in most cases, independent brands. Representatives of Glycine, Christiaan van der Klaauw, Cornelius & Cie and the owners / watchmakers of Limes, D. Dornblüth & Sohn, Lotterman & Söhne, Hentschel Hamburg, Rainer Nienaber Bünde etc. etc. were all there. The brand/manufacturer that should be present (but wasn’t) is the new Dutch manufacturer ‘Grönefeld Exclusive Timepieces’. Too bad, a missed chance.

During the event, I ran into some old watchfriends, like Mike Stuffler (WatchUseek moderator), Michiel (who brought some cool vintage Glycine’s with him), Ernie Romers (WatchUseek owner and co-initiator of the event) and his wife, Alon Ben-Joseph of Ace Jewelers (and WatchFreaksBlog.com) and one of my sponsors, Willem Kamerman of Blancier (Lotterman & Söhne).

Ernie Romers, co-initiator/organizer of the event.

Had some great conversations with the watchmakers over at Lotterman & Söhne and was impressed by their WorldTimer watch. Although the colors on the dial are not my cup of tea, the technical design of the watch is great. All timezones can be read with this watch, even the offset time zones (+/- 0.5 hours). Another great watch that they created, is this single handed watch in gold.

Another great watchmaker that was fun to talk to, was Rainer Nienaber.

I posted a blog on his retrograde watches not too long ago, and was now able to see them in the flesh. This guy creates very original and very well crafted timepieces. Make sure to look-out for his Digimat watch as well. Oh yeah, respect for the colorful sneakers he was wearing!

A brand that I had never heard of before, was Hentschel from Hamburg (Germany). Hentschel creates watches that will remind you of those fabulous watch designs from the 1940s and 1950s. The 1938 Omega Chronometer comes to mind, but also the vintage Jeager-LeCoultres and IWC watches had similar designs. Unfortunately, the watch stand of Hentschel was too crowded to be able to examine their watches a little bit better.

All kudos to the organization of this event. I hope there will be a Watch 2009 as well.

Photo credits to Bernard Werk of Watching Magazine

In the first weekend of December, I will be visiting the Watch2008 event. A two day watch event, to be held in a castle in Maastricht. A city with a very nice shopping center and lots of nice watch and jewelery stores.

Anyway, one of the exhibitors on the Watch2008 event is Rainer Nienaber, from Bünde/Germany. This watchmaker, born in 1955, created his first wristwatches in 1995. Before that, Nienaber had a repairshop and was primarily occupied with clocks (regulators). Nienaber is a member of the AHCI - the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants. Other members of the AHCI are George Daniels (Co-Axial design), Paul Gerber, Svend Anderson, Franck Muller, FP Journe, Felix Baumgartner (Urwerk) and our own Dutchman, Christiaan van der Klaauw.

Horlogenieuws.nl, a Dutch blog with the latest watch news, had a topic on Nienaber recently. They covered the Digimat watch, a nice rectangular shaped watch with a jump-hour display. Very nice, and limited to 25 pieces. That’s what I call ‘limited’.

After a visit to the Nienaber website, which is a bit of a disappointment really, I was immediately interested when seeiing the Retrograde watches. The disappointment of the website is mainly because it is lacking good pictures, pricing information and specifications on each watch. However, I rather see the Nienaber company putting their effort in creating interesting watches than in their website.

The Retrograde watch comes in several models, but I am discussing this ‘The Unique’ model here. Only 50 pieces per year, featuring a regulator dial with a jumping hour at the top, followed by a retrograde minute hand and a small seconds hand. The stainless steel case has a 41mm diameter and is 10.8mm thick. The dial has an incredible nice pattern and is made out of silver.

Nienaber used a A.Schild S.A. movement, also referred to as A.S. with caliber number 1130. This manual wind movement was produced between 1936 and 1967. This slow-ticker (18000 bp/h) is a 29.4mm movement, with a power reserve of 38 hours.

I am definately going to check Rainer’s watches out in December. The price of this watch is 6300 euro. An up-to-date price list of Nienaber watches can be found here. Since the used movement is not very special and can be found in lower market brands like MarcelloC as well, I will pay close attention to the finish of the movement and the applied modification. Otherwise I think 6300 euro is a lot of money for this watch.

Do you want to see Nienaber’s watches yourself as well? Thanks to Ernie Romers of WatchUseek, one of the Watch2008 partners, I have some entrée cards worth 35 Euro each to give away. Just drop me a line at fratellowatches@gmail.com.