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jeroensv & the nomos amsterdam series / club siren white

My friend JeroenSV is a watch collector and motorcar fanatic. Besides his day job as a mechanical engineer, you may often find him behind the lens of a camera. His favourite subjects? Rather unsurprisingly it’s cars and watches. You may find his work over at WatchWorks Haarlem, where he’s the sole photographer, and at Van Santen & Vink, a company he founded together with childhood friend Dimer van Santen. I’m a fan!

A few weeks back I took a little detour on my way to work to drop off a couple of watches for Jeroen to mess around with. Today I am proud to share the result. Enjoy – and make sure to give Jeroen a follow via @JeroenSV!

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watch: Martina Etti of NOMOS on The Ace List

Got an hour to spare? In this episode of The Ace List, Ace Jeweler‘s Alon Ben Joseph talks with Martina Etti, who is head of international sales at NOMOS Glashuette. The two discuss a wide range of topics, from the history of Deutscher Werkbund and watchmaking in Glashuette to the latest Brinker’s limited edition Club. Highly recommended!

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New: Ace x NOMOS Tangente 38 Amsterdam Limited Edition

Ace Jewelers introduces the NOMOS Tangente 38 Amsterdam, a limited edition of 45 pieces.

Earlier this week, we introduced the NOMOS Tangente 38 Amsterdam over at Ace Jewelers, our mothership. It’s the third watch in our ongoing Amsterdam series, and our fourth limited edition NOMOS in total – the first being the funky Orion 100 Years De Stijl. In this post I’d like to give a glimpse behind the scenes of its conception.

If you mention NOMOS’ watches to anyone with even the slightest interest in watches, the first model that springs to mind is the Tangente. Without any doubt it’s their most emblematic watch – in fact, NOMOS refers to it as ‘the archetypal NOMOS watch’. Yet, three limited editions in, we hadn’t touched upon this timeless classic. Well, there’s no escaping it now – our fourth would have to be a Tangente.

Now, this is where it gets hard. I know the word icon gets thrown around a lot, but as far as I’m concerned in case of the Tangente it’s warranted. And how do you improve upon an icon? How do you add your own character whilst respecting the original design? There’ve been a lot of limited edition Tangente models over the years, especially in the first decade of the 2000’s. Some of them I’d consider a success, others not so much. Many times with just a dash of colour, or a retailers name replacing the signature, whilst others featured more elaborate changes to the design.

One thing we didn’t want to deviate from was our Amsterdam-theme. We had done two Amsterdam NOMOS before, and to make it a proper series we felt we needed at least three. So this would have to be a Tangente Amsterdam, meaning dressed in the colors black, white and red. We’re getting somewhere here.

But how to incorporate these colours and make the watch stand out? Dark dial, white print, red seconds hand? Meh… But it suddenly hit me. One of my favourite releases of the past few years has been the Tangente 100 Jahre Bauhaus. Here the Tangente features an additional design element in the form of a contrasting minute track. It didn’t take long to put together a couple of design proposals based on the Bauhaus design, using the color codes of the Amsterdam series.

We sent them in to the NOMOS design team and it all went fast from there. NOMOS liked our proposals, sent back with their favourite with only a minor addition in the form of the XXX’s at 6:00, we approved (or rather, we were IN LOVE!). Fast-forward a couple months and here’s the prototype. WOW – it works even better in real life!

I must admit I never saw the Tangente as a watch for myself, although I greatly admired its design. Well, no longer. Although our prototype doesn’t run and I’m working from home (which might or might not be ‘dressed’ in my swimming trunks), I’ve been prancing around with it for a couple of days now – and yes, I’ll have mine – lucky #13 please ! It’s a proper stunner, full of character, powerful yet subtle and delicate. I simply love it.

The Ace x NOMOS Tangente 38 Amsterdam is available exclusively at Ace Jewelers.

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new: NOMOS Zürich Weltzeit Amsterdam

Introducing the NOMOS Zürich Weltzeit Amsterdam – a limited edition of 25 pieces created for Ace Jewelers of Amsterdam.

Friends – I am super excited to finally introduce you to the latest limited edition of Ace Jewelers: the Zürich Weltzeit Amsterdam! You may know that Minimatikal is part of Ace Jewelers. It’s like our little online NOMOS boutique. Or flagship store. Anyway, as such I’ve been closely involved with this project. It’s the third limited edition we’ve done with NOMOS and the second in the ‘Amsterdam’ sub-series.

This time we went with the Zürich Weltzeit as a base model. It’s NOMOS most complicated watch and one that I’ve written about on this blog once or twice. In its standard configuration the Weltzeit exists in either silver or blue. Other variations have been made, like the porcelain-like white of Topper Jewelers and the rose-colored ‘Red Dot’ of The Hour Glass. Never has the Zürich Weltzeit been done in black though. And that’s exactly what we’ve done!

The black dial is unique already, but we’ve added a few other subtle touches that truly make this an ‘Amsterdam’ edition. GMT+1 is now Amsterdam rather than Berlin – in bright red too – and the little home icon normally found at 3:00 is replaced by the flag of Amsterdam. Finally, the crown is engraved with the three Amsterdam crosses (like on our Club Campus Amsterdam) while the case back is engraved with ZÃœRICH LIMITED EDITION AMSTERDAM FOR ACE JEWELERS X/25. Yes, 25 pieces only!

The NOMOS Zuerich Weltzeit Amsterdam is available at Ace Jewelers and in our own shop.