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Mr. Punctual and Ms. Tardy, Buying Time - Shopping with Shuler Hensley

by Joyce Wadler of The New York Times,  May 4, 2006

Click on the above New York Times logo to read an article in the Styles Home & Garden Section about Tony Award winning actor and star of the new Broadway Musical Hit Tarzan, the famous Shuler Hensley and his wife Paula, shopping for Clocks in our Grand Central Terminal Clock and Watch Store. Looking for something truly unique, they veered away from our outstanding Howard Miller Grandfather Clock collection, focusing instead on our antiques and our high quality Museum Clock™ reproductions. They purchased an original Western European 1920s Oswald Owl automata novelty clock, which tells time with the direction of its eyes, and was one of the inspirations for our new Pet Clock™ series.

Architectural Digest

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Time Magazine

Seems Like Old Time, Vintage Wristwatches Are Up-To-The-Minute Fashion January 28, 1985 - Featuring our Falt Watch Service [IN TIME MAGAZINE "LIVING" SECTION]

Hot off the wrist, a catalog of collectibles: '20s Patek Philippe: $3,000 Stewart linger last fall opened Time Will Tell, a watch boutique that sells everything from period Cartier (a 1930 Tank at around $2,500) to certified Mickey Mouse watches ($500.) "The demand is just about to bubble over," predicts Edward Faber, who shows a lavish collection of oldies in his jewelry gallery off Fifth Avenue. "These watches are still significantly under priced." Old wristwatches have been often on view in period movies like Chinatown and Chariots of Fire. They also show up with some regularity in fashion layouts of Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. The oldtimers first started to become salable, however, with the late '70s interest in retro clothes and in reaction to the flood of maddeningly accurate quartz and digital models available at the local pharmacy. "You can get a wafer-thin watch that keeps perfect time for $20 at a Tony Di Leonardo tackles a tricky repair Something mechanical can be humanizing. "Make, movement, rarity," says Los Angeles Lawyer Jack Quinn. "That's what the serious collector looks for." Muses Hans Rohrer, a computer manager in Munich: "These pieces are reverse time machines. They exude a flavor--even a musty smell--of yesterday, a bit of immortality." Rohrer keeps all his yesterdays in a drawer at home. Quinn keeps the family immortality collection snug in a bank vault, although his journalist wife Joan has been known to wear several pieces of it, simultaneously, on her wrist. LeCoultre flip After years of neglect and ignominy, including having their movements cannibalized for spare parts and their cases melted down, old wristwatches, particularly models made from the early 1920s through the '40s, have come into their own. Auction houses are getting "record prices" for vintage Rolexes and collectible Cartiers, according to Daryn Schnipper, a watch expert at Sotheby Parke Bernet. Sotheby's had four major auctions in New York in 1984 that prominently featured wristwatches; another, just last week, established several new highs including a record for a 1935 Cartier Tank ($10,000). It is eloquent testimony to the persistent high stylishness of premium wristwatches that jewelry shops in Milan and Paris will display a 1920s Patek Philippe, made of platinum and curved to conform to the wrist, right next to a new gold model. Antique stores in London will sell, say, a reversible Jaeger-le Coultre or a vintage Audemars Piguet, with only two small windows at the top of the solid gold case, as objets of decorative jewelry, like a piece of Lalique crystal. On the tony reaches of Madison Avenue, Watch Entrepreneur dime store," scoffs Sig Shonholtz, who runs the Second Time Around Watch Co. in Los Angeles. "So what else is there? The only thing left is backlash. It's humanizing to have something quirky and mechanical on your wrist." The cost of such humanization can be considerable: for example, a very nice but unexceptional Patek from the 1930s may start at $1,700. Fanatics point out that newer models are not only much more costly (the least expensive contemporary gold Patek retails in the neighborhood of $3,950) but, as a rule, are much less interestingly styled. "I respect the old watches for design, form and their personality and character," says Unger. "They all have individuality, just like the people who choose them." They can also have repair problems. Unger, like '30s Audemars many other dealers, gives a year's guarantee, but prospective owners may fairly be warne