This book, Secrets of Vacheron Constantin by Franco Cologni seems to have sneaked into the country.
Its now available from many outlets such as Hamilton Books and Amazon, fairly heavily discounted.
It is a large, lavishly produced book which comes in a slip case. Like all other books on this maker I found it a disappointment. Something about this company inspires writers to wax poetic about everything else going on at the formative times but this book has a small kernel of useful information. It ocasionaly veers onto the subject and provides information about the founder and their approach.
It has a lot of pictures but most lack the detail I would have liked. It is usually only one picture and no detailed sets of pictures of key watches.
The pictures and text are not well integrated.
That said, there are a lot of pictures many well done and a lot information to be gleaned.
It has sections titled Watchmaker, Casemaker, Dialmaker, and clockmaker.
The watchmaker,section has one screaming typo, writing sticking, when they meant striking. Its kind of sad to see those great repeaters all sticking!!
Another complaint, the book has nothing about Vacheron's attempt to crack the American railroad market.
Bottom line is that its a good campanion piece to those with an interest in this company and is worth the cost of the book, but its a close call. In terms of information per $ spent it is far short of the "Cradle of Watchmaking" set but its significantly better and more detailed than a lot of the purple puff being sold today.
Since it is about Vacheron, if it helps you make one really good buy the book more than pays for itself.
Its now available from many outlets such as Hamilton Books and Amazon, fairly heavily discounted.
It is a large, lavishly produced book which comes in a slip case. Like all other books on this maker I found it a disappointment. Something about this company inspires writers to wax poetic about everything else going on at the formative times but this book has a small kernel of useful information. It ocasionaly veers onto the subject and provides information about the founder and their approach.
It has a lot of pictures but most lack the detail I would have liked. It is usually only one picture and no detailed sets of pictures of key watches.
The pictures and text are not well integrated.
That said, there are a lot of pictures many well done and a lot information to be gleaned.
It has sections titled Watchmaker, Casemaker, Dialmaker, and clockmaker.
The watchmaker,section has one screaming typo, writing sticking, when they meant striking. Its kind of sad to see those great repeaters all sticking!!
Another complaint, the book has nothing about Vacheron's attempt to crack the American railroad market.
Bottom line is that its a good campanion piece to those with an interest in this company and is worth the cost of the book, but its a close call. In terms of information per $ spent it is far short of the "Cradle of Watchmaking" set but its significantly better and more detailed than a lot of the purple puff being sold today.
Since it is about Vacheron, if it helps you make one really good buy the book more than pays for itself.
