WHEN IS A CLASSIC NOT A CLASSIC?
‘Fauxtina’ and ‘heritage watches’: brand new but specially treated to look old
IF YOU WERE lucky enough to be at Dijon Prenois back in June, you might have seen a crowd gathered around a slightly shabby old car. It was parked next to a showroom-new, debt-of-a-minor-South-American-country GTC4 Lusso. But the Ferrari might as well have been old flypaper for all the interest it attracted. The car that snapped eyeballs was an early 1920s Bugatti Type 49 tourer.
There was something about the Bugatti that marked it out as different from the toys around it that had nothing to do with the marque or the price; it was the character that comes from being loved and driven over many, many miles. This was a car that could tell tales of pre-autoroute, sun-blistered tarmac D-road runs to Perpignan, packed with tennis rackets and kids. It had been used more than polished. And it was this character, made up from the scars of regular use, that gave it a value way above the new car next to it.
But how would you feel about something that was, apparently, a time-served, patinated classic but that had rolled out of the workshop yesterday and been deliberately beaten-up, scratch by scratch and stain by stain? That’s exactly what watches such as the Longines Military Heritage and Laco’s Erbstück (‘heirloom’) are.
Let’s say you want an original, classic Laco B-Uhr (a specific design of military watch) from the 1940s. That raises three big questions: price, practicality and politics. The watch would cost you around £10,000, possibly more. And these were precision tools handed out to Luftwaffe navigators and returned after each flight; they weren’t designed for everyday wear, so don’t clean the car with one on your wrist. Finally there’s the big question: are you happy to wear a watch worn by someone who was determined to bomb the hell out of Allied cities?
So if the design appeals – and why wouldn’t it? – but you don’t want either the suspect heritage or a shiny new watch, what do you do? Perhaps you go for an Erbstück.
Some of the watch forums will leave you
in little doubt as to their opinion – and it’s not good. A comment on one sums-up the rather cynical mood: ‘Rust, dents and scratches by a special team of craftsmen? Presumably they all used to work at British Leyland.’
The popular view is that ‘fauxtina’ – the portmanteau for this pre-aged look – is a daft idea because it’s something anyone could do just by bunging a watch into a drum with a few bricks, soaking the hands and dials in tea, and sanding the straps a bit.
But that’s a bit harsh. It’s actually properly difficult to make a new watch look convincingly old. There isn’t a production line where finished watches roll off to be jumped on by a fat bloke in hobnailed boots. A watchmaker works on each watch individually to make sure it’s perfectly, er, imperfect. Laco’s Sarah Ruhmann explains: ‘Distressing to cases, dial and hands is done by hand and eye. All the components for one watch are aged together to ensure a sympathetic and uniform look, like scratches on the case that might occur while wearing an old watch.’
A close-up of the dial shows the combination of light fading and water damage that actually gives the watch a real character. Even the dial plots are puffy – just like old lume that has been accidentally exposed to water by a leaky crown gasket. The case has the sort of dings and scrapes that could have come from plenty
of spannering on recalcitrant Auto Unions. Because of the process, each watch is slightly different and you can specify quite how aged you want yours. Creating an appearance like that takes some doing.
That’s certainly reflected in the price premium. A standard Laco Wein B-Uhr will cost you £860. A Wein Erbstück is more than double that at £1860, reflecting the extra work that goes into hand-ageing it. You’d have to be pretty determined to swallow the difference.
Perhaps the idea of an artificially patinated, 1940s-but-actually-modern watch lacks any sort of appeal. But you really do need to pick this watch up and handle it to appreciate the quality of the basic watch itself, then the work that’s gone into patinating it. It may not convert you, but you’ll understand that it’s more complex than it seems.
A watch that’s been aged liked this could have ended up as a dog’s dinner of scratches and dings. But these look like watches that really have been worn as watches should be – for years and without a care. It may not be authentic but it’s proper craftsmanship.
And that may be the way to see Laco’s Erbstück concept: not as fauxtina, but as an example of pretty damn clever watchmaking in its own right. And a watch about which you won’t fret so much over the odd scratch or ding.