The Timepiece Journal

A skull watch is a watch featuring a skull motif — and the skull on a timepiece has meant the same thing since the 16th century: memento mori, "remember you will die." This guide covers the full history from the earliest death's-head pocket watches of the 1500s through Victorian mourning culture to the contemporary skull skeleton watch, where the skull architecture frames a visible mechanical...

A skeleton watch has an open dial that exposes the movement — the balance wheel oscillating, the gear train turning, the escapement releasing energy one tooth at a time. This guide covers everything: what makes a watch a skeleton, what you can see through the dial and why it matters, the 18th-century origins of the format, how skeletonising is done, the three types of...

Most men who don't wear watches stopped for a logical reason: the smartphone made the quartz watch redundant. The answer isn't another quartz watch — it's a mechanical automatic with a skeleton dial. A visible movement gives him something to understand and watch, which creates the habit of wearing it. This guide explains why it works, what to look for, and which watch to...