Joseph "Joey Bananas" Bonanno and Mahatma Gandhi Watch Auctions

The cast for the next Hollywood buddy film? I wish. Actually, these two polar opposites are being tied together with an upcoming auction of their timepieces.

On the left, everyone's favorite non-violent resistor Mohatma Gandhi - To his right, the original gangster and supreme leader of the New York crime family, Joseph "Joey Bananas" Bonanno.

Impress your family and friends with the ultimate Yin and Yang of time. After making a killing with Albert Einstein's wristwatch, Antiquorum will be auctioning this "Godfather Clock" and "Pocket Peace" in early March, 2009.

Giuseppe Bonanno Watch

A yellow gold Patek Philippe, Ref. 1516, that belonged to the late Giuseppe Bonanno, Sr. (the “Godfather” of the Bonanno crime family) is also included in Antiquorum’s upcoming auction. It is a fine, extremely rare and important, 18K yellow gold wristwatch, which is accompanied by a letter of authenticity from his daughter, Catherine Bonanno.

Mr. Bonanno was an original member of the “Commission,” founded in 1931, whose purpose was to establish rule by consensus among the crime families. Other members included the leaders of the Five New York Families: Charlie Luciano , Joseph Profaci , Gaetano Gagliano and Vincent Mangano. It is thought that the character of “Vito Corleone” in Mario Puzo’s novel, “The Godfather” was inspired by Bonanno. The watch was given to him by Charlie “Lucky” Luciano in 1957 in Sicily.

Estimate: $ 5,000-$ 8,000.

Gandhi Pocket Watch

In addition, Mahatma Gandhi’s silver Zenith pocket watch (circa 1910-1915) is expected to attract significant interest. The pocket watch belonged to Gandhi, who later gave it to his grandniece, Abha Gandhi, his assistant of six years, and in whose arms he died. Also offered as part of the same lot are Gandhi’s sandals, glasses, bowl, plate, and letters of authenticity.

A beloved leader of India’s independence movement and one of history’s most widely-recognized and revered civil rights leaders, Gandhi pioneered non-violent civil disobedience and pacifism in response to tyranny.

Estimate: $20,000 - $30,000.

Auction-->LINK

Also included is the "Kennedy Onassis" Watch, a waterproof Nastrix wristwatch owned by both President John Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis. Oh Jackie, that's so not cool...

See related;
Albert Einstein's Wristwatch Auction-->LINK


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Urwerk Tarantula Crawls Onto Your Wrist and Sticks its Fangs Into Your Veins

The Urwerk Tarantula, a brand new design from the Lennon and McCartney of the watch world - actually.. correction, the Jagger and Richards since Time is on Their Side. Watchmaker Felix Baumgartner and designer Martin Frei are appropriately at the Let It Bleed of their career.



The ‘T’ in the 103T is at first a mystery, but only until the first look down through the massive sapphire crystal into the mechanism below. There you will sense a shape before you see it. A form slowly emerges from the orbital cross and stretches its mesmerising legs: ‘T’ for Tarantula. URWERK’s latest addition to the UR103 collection has a few genetic codes borrowed from one of the most famous members of the world of arachnids.

In the UR103T, the titanium cross has been replaced by a completely redesigned structure in ARCAP, a very stable copper/nickel alloy. The dark ARCAP wraps around the hour satellites in a protective embrace. This new configuration ensures that the numbers on the hour satellites can only be seen when they are required to tell the time while passing the arc of the minutes. The actual mechanism for rotating the satellites has been completely modified on the UR103T. With this model the satellites rotate simultaneously behind the scenes in multiple stages, in preparation for their turn to indicate the time. They actually perform a four-beat 480° pirouette. Each satellite turns four 120° turns in the period between leaving the minute arc and arriving again with a new numeral displaying. The orbital satellite complication is over 300 times heavier than traditional hands, a factor that requires absolute precision in the manufacture of its minuscule components, and in assembling, balancing and regulating the complication to obtain an excellent chronometric performance.

The Time Spider

Urwerk Tarantula's fangs reach deep into your wrist

You can almost see the blood dripping from the wound

An early Urwerk with covered case, cool as %$#@!

The Maestro Baumgartner

URWERK website-->LINK

All Urwerk Posts at The Watchismo Times-->LINK

Wristshots via Horomundi


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The 1974 La Chaux de Fonds Concept Watches of Jozsef Scherer

35 years ago, professor of design Jozsef Scherer entered some bold wristwatch concepts to the 1974 La Chaux-de-Fonds International competition for watch and clock design.

His entries were based upon three parameters;

1. A wristwatch for users of either sex - to be inspired by the rectangle.

2. A quartz-crystal electronic wristwatch - with 7 segment digital display

3. Watch-free category - creation of a timepiece to be worn or carried on the person (pendant, pocket, etc)

Below is his entry for the wrist-free category, a tubular pocket watch, pendant watch, table clock, and/or art object. The digital time is display upon extending the tubes to reveal the digits.

Tube table clock

The expanding tube

Assorted tube clock/watch sketches

Tube pocket watch

Tube pendant watch

Also a tube wristwatch

And for his electronic quartz crystal electronic watch entry, Mr. Scherer developed the very modern looking semi-sideview models below. You can also see his preliminary sketches below that.

And finally, his entries for a unisex wristwatch based upon the rectangle;

Although not the winner of the competition, Mr. Scherer's designs were obviously ahead of their time!

Since 1980, Mr. Scherer has been a professor of design at Moholy-Nagy Art and Design University in Budapest.

See related posts;
All Sideview Watches
One-of-a-kind LEDs of Andrew Grima
History of LED Calculator Watches
History of Dynamic Scattering LCD
History of Solar LED Watches
Opus 8 Mechanical Digital
Mechanico Mechanical Digital of de Grisogono
LED-LCD Watch Combos
Zenith Analog/Digital Hybrid
Other Analog-Digital Posts
Alternative Displays
All Digital Watch Posts
All LED Watch Related Posts
All Vintage Watch Posts

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SPACEMAN-TIME CONTINUUM - The Spaceman Watches of 1972-77

All obsessions have their own unique Big Bang and appropriately enough, my compulsive watch collecting was born from these Spaceman watches of the seventies.

Below is an article I wrote for QP Magazine reminiscing about going back to the future with these Spacemen.


TIME-SPACEMAN CONTINUUM - Spaceman Watches of 1972-1977
Leaving New York one chilly winter day, late in 1999, I found myself come unstuck in time and arrive in Basel at the dawn of 1972.

THE UNIVERSE IN A NEUCHÂTEL

My time travel led me to a world filled with hundreds of Spacemen, sitting undisturbed in a Basel watch factory with no plans of visiting the moon anytime soon. This grounded crew was actually a secret stash of vintage Spaceman watches I unearthed at a former distributor of the timepieces designed by Andre LeMarquand, an architect from Neuchâtel . The futuristic watches had fallen out of style during the 80s and 90s but I was ready to fly them out of their dark Swiss graveyard and back onto the wrists of space-age sentimentalists like myself.


In the late sixties Claude Lebet, owner of the Bulle based watch brand Catena asked Le Marquand to create a timepiece inspired by man’s conquest of the moon and the astronauts who made it there. Mr. Le Marquand provided him with his first wristwatch design called, what else, the "Spaceman".

The Spaceman was unlike anything seen before and Catena introduced the fleet at the Basel Fair of 1972. The large oval case appeared to be docked on your wrist held by a triple-forked Corfam strap by DuPont. The case also had a coned dome crystal half concealed by a coloured metal visor that allowed viewing of the dial to only the wearer. All hands and markers were perfectly seventies orange with models in a variety of colours only possible during that special decade.

The watches were powered by automatic and manual winding mechanical ETA movements and were distributed by a variety brands, among them Jules Jurgensen, Fortis, Tressa and Zeno.

Automatic Spaceman Audacieuse

The success led to the development of new Spaceman a few years later, an audacious design by Le Marquand and appropriately named, the "Audacieuse".

THE FINAL FRONTIER

The new Audacieuse was angular yet aerodynamic, looking more like an early miniature prototype of a B2 Stealth Bomber than a watch. The extreme design was square with a hooded dial, similar to the original semi-sideview concept. The straps were oversized and wide as the case itself, available in stainless steel or colored leather. A few very rare models with mechanical jump hour digital displays were also out there and a few quartz-digital "Spacesonic" were produced until the Spaceman series came to an end in 1977. Having completed his mission, the Spaceman stepped aside for the next giant leap in timekeeping – light emitting diodes (LED) and liquid crystal displays (LCD).

1977 LCD "Spacesonic"

My close-encounter with the past was fuelled by reading Pieter Doensen's rare book, "Watch - History of the Modern Wrist Watch". This was been my launch pad to the world of vintage-modern watch design and technology and it has been described as the "the first comprehensive study of the collectible modern wrist watch". Flipping through the book, one can feast their eyes on Richard Arbib's Hamilton Electrics of the fifties & sixties, Roger Tallon's LIP Mach 2000's of the seventies and a multitude of other horological advancements over the past fifty years. But it was the futuristic charm of Andre LeMarquand's Spaceman that first abducted my interests.

SPACEMAN GALLERY

All White Spaceman Audacieuse
(manual winding)

Very Collectible Audacieuse with Lighting Display

Gloss Burgundy Audacieuse

Leather/Woodgrain Audacieuse

Ultra-Rare Tiger Eye Dial Version

Assorted shots of the Audacieuse

VERY RARE Spaceman Jump Hours (above)

Prototype Dynamic Scattering LCD Spacesonic

Inner dial of the Spaceman Oval

Sideviews

On-the-wrist Shots

Brown Oval (Corfam Straps)

Blue Oval

Red Oval

Original Spaceman Advertising (Click to view)

Spaceman Watches

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