The Story Of Your Watch: James Buttery, Editor of QP Magazine

The Story Of Your Watch: James Buttery, Editor of QP Magazine

We all love a great story – they are at the heart of everything we do at MrWatchMaster. We seek out the best stories connected to watches and bring them to life.

Our new series, The Story Of Your Watch, gives you an insight into the stories that motivate people to choose a specific watch and the special occasions they celebrate asking two simple questions…

  1. What is the story of the watch you bought to mark a special occasion in your life? 
  2. Tell us about the watch you bought because of specific story attached to it?

To begin our series, we bring you the views of James Buttery, Editor of QP Magazine.

I treated myself to an Oris Divers Sixty Five 42mm after joining QP as editor in 2016. I’d attended a press breakfast in the basement of a restaurant in Covent Garden a few weeks before and while everyone else was fighting to get their hands on the bronze Carl Brashear watch for a wristshot I slipped on the stainless steel model in the opposite corner of the room not expecting much from it. I almost instantly realised that the watch was damn near perfect on my wrist. It has what I think is the best blue lacquer dial on the planet, dark and inky and it’s still a daily wearer. Being a bit of a completist I bought it with the brilliant riveted steel bracelet, the distressed leather and the rubber but it has rarely been off the steel, it’s nicely worn in now. I’ve just realised that Simon Cudd was there that morning, he spotted me and shouted over “you want to watch him, he’ll be off with that”, I do miss Simon.

Omega Mariner similar to the one James bought at auction

I was at a Fellows viewing in Mayfair and spotted an interesting case shape tucked away towards the back of one of the cabinets, really almost hidden, and asked to see it. Adrian Hailwood explained the Omega ‘Mariner’ dated from the mid-70s and featured the brand’s first in-house, post-BETA 21 quartz movement, the 1310. Apparently Omega strapped these watches to the mast and keel of two yachts taking part in the Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race in 1976 and after they returned the watches were in considerably better shape than the boats. The story is great but it was the angular geometry of the case and integrated bracelet that blew me away. It was in good shape to begin with but I had it serviced and (shock horror) re-polished, Swiss Time Services did an unbelievably good job, it looks like new now. When he was at Phillips, Paul Maudsley told me it was the only example he’d seen that still had corners. The Mariner cost me very little at auction, but everyone who sees it wants to take a closer look at it.

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