He Makes Watches by Hand in China

When it comes to watchmaking, Logan Kuan Rao is motivated by a Chinese proverb that, loosely translated, says your character is shaped by your environment. And by another, much less philosophical phrase: Made in China. Both have been on his mind recently as Mr. Rao, an independent watchmaker based in China’s southern port city of Guangzhou, completed the first piece of his second design, called the Wuwei. It took time, but he has worked out how to use limited resources to make the watch, a 37.5-millimeter time-only mechanical piece, almost…

Watches in Pairs Are Popular Among Couples in Asia

Watch brands and collectors are both enjoying a bit of matchy-matchy action right now as his-and-her looks in timepieces are turning up everywhere. Piaget plans to celebrate the coming Chinese New Year with a special collection of eight high jewelry and métiers d’art watches — four masculine and four feminine — scheduled to be released in December, with prices on request. The designs nod to the dragon and the phoenix, traditional Chinese symbols for male and female. (And, 2024 also happens to be the Year of the Dragon.) In October,…

Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

(Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday. 1. Voter fraud prosecution is rare, erratic and often undeserved. As part of our Democracy Challenged series, The New York Times reviewed some 400 voting-fraud charges filed since 2017. Often, voters didn’t know they’d broken a law. Serious penalties usually fell hardest on those least able to fight back: Poor and Black people were likelier to go to jail than comfortable retirees. In Florida, where the governor, Ron DeSantis,…

The Chinese Watch Brand That Beat the Swiss

In 2016 Zhang Jianmin was on a visit to Milan when he decided to buy an expensive suit. The purchase was something of a flight of fancy: Mr. Zhang, founder and president of CIGA Design, a wristwatch manufacturer based in Shenzhen, China, imagined wearing it to the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. The annual awards event, commonly called G.P.H.G. or the Grand Prix, is often described as “the Oscars of watchmaking.” “I told myself, I will only wear this suit on the G.P.H.G. stage when I win the award,” Mr.…

Despite Risks, Watch Brands Are Fixated on China

For Swiss watchmakers preoccupied with growth — and let’s be honest, that is virtually all of them — China is the relationship they cannot live without. “It’s going to be the growth market with the biggest opportunities in years to come,” said Jean-Philippe Bertschy, a luxury goods analyst at Vontobel, a private banking and investment management group based in Zurich. “We can talk about the U.S. and Asian markets, but in terms of volume and size, of course it will be China for the foreseeable future.” By all accounts, the…

Hong Kong’s Global Watch Dominance Comes to an End

Hong Kong was the Swiss watch industry’s No. 1 export market for more than a decade. Not anymore. “It is the end of El Dorado,” Thierry Huron, founder of The Mercury Project, a Swiss watch and jewelry consultancy, wrote in an email. With its tourism-driven sales dented by pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019 and then blocked entirely by a coronavirus-related ban on tourist arrivals, Hong Kong lost half its watch and jewelry sales between 2018 and 2021, according to the July edition of the Sell-Out Index, Mr. Huron’s monthly report. The…

At Jaeger-Le Coultre, Time for Dessert

Haute cuisine and haute horlogerie may not seem like the most obvious companions, but to Nina Métayer, they are meant for one another. The Paris-based pastry chef has created four desserts for the Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre’s 1931 Café, an attraction that accompanies an exhibition celebrating the 90th anniversary of its Reverso model. The 8,600-square-foot display, “Reverso: Timeless Stories Since 1931,” opened this summer at K11, an arts center in Shanghai, and is scheduled to move to 15 Rue Faubourg-St. Honoré in Paris in October. Ms. Métayer, 33, said craftsmanship, small…