Hollywood is all about awards ? Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmys, etc. ? so it was only fitting that the first WatchTime Los Angeles event included among its plethora of luxury watches on display a number of timepieces that were awarded watchmaking’s highest honor, a prize from the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (aka the Geneva Grand Prix or GPHG). Here are five award winners you may have encountered if you were prowling the halls at Hudson Loft last weekend.
The Bovet Récital 22 Grand Récital, winner of the Aiguille d’Or, the top prize in the 2018 GPHG, is the third and final part of a triad of timepieces that began with the Récital 18 Shooting Star Tourbillon in 2016 and continued with the Récital 20 Astérium in 2017. The case functions as a horological tellurium, including a stunning, hemispherical, birds-eye view of the Earth at 12 o?clock and a flying tourbillon at 6 o?clock that represents the sun with a carriage bridge acting as fiery rays shooting out of the sun?s body. Finally, a spherical moon orbits the Earth according to the exact length of its synodic period of 29.53 days. The half-Earth that displays the Northern hemisphere rotates on its own axis and demonstrates the passage of time on a natural 24-hour cycle. The surface of the Earth is engraved and hand-painted giving the oceans, mountains, deserts, and forests an unmistakable sense of realism. At the base of the globe, a graduated scale displays the hour by means of a three-dimensio...