Blancpain

I see where you're coming from because I read Forster and Bartsch's pieces. I think Forster offers the argument with fewer bullets to bite and easier ability to accommodate different views, and hence is preferable from a purely argumentative side of things. As for Bartsch's...here are my thoughts.

His not a completely compelling argument because it relies on a strong claim that isn't easily verified, namely that the date at 4:30 is there only as compensation. Bartsch is putatively okay with the date at strange positions (insofar as 6 or 3 o'clock are taken as 'normal' positions, whatever that means) as long as it doesn't look like an afterthought. Surprisingly, he's okay with the Octa Automatique Lune France-China 50 which I happen to think looks like a complete mess. The only problem is that to accurately assess whether something is compensatory afterthought in design usually requires insight into the actual design process of the watch. Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of insight; lots of things that seem to be afterthoughts can in fact be thought-out in advance, and honestly, it may be the case that the designers had competing visions and the one with 4:30 won out, maybe even narrowly. Shortly, there's no way to know whether this was very deliberate or not without talking to the people behind the product. 

However, Bartsch is totally right that it looks terrible on the Breguet Type XX novelties because the date is too large relative to the numerals and takes up far too much space. Those are watches that shouldn't have the date at all since they are already quite busy; never mind whether it was deliberate or not. That said, on the Bathyscaphe, which I own, it looks excellent. This is because it's not too large, doesn't distract from the rest of the dial, and is also not completely smushed up against the minute track like on the Breguet. If anything, it isn't the position of the date (4:30, 6, 11:30, etc.) that matters as much as the execution. I think for example that the Rolex execution is generally terrible with the cyclops; it's one of the things I despised on my 118238. If the execution is clean and unobtrusive, then I think the position doesn't matter. Also, consider Lange's inability to always colour-match their big date to dark dials (they got it right on the Saxonia 384.029 and Lange 1 101.035) and indeed that its discs aren't parallel which doesn't look so nice whereas Glashütte Original can do both of those things consistently. Those are features I really don't like on several Lange 1s, for example. The Journe I mentioned earlier (because Bartsch mentioned it) has the date not colour matched and closer to the 11 than the 12. Ideally, it would be moved to 12 or removed entirely, or at the least, colour-matched to give us some visual ease.

I think the real conclusion is that we should have, for non-bespoke watches, the choice between a date and no date model, like with the Rolex Submariner. I also think if one is going to object to dates, there have to be more parameters than merely the position it occupies on the dial. I think one must additionally consider the colour of the disc, whether its font matches the rest on the watch, whether it is well-spaced from other markers or not, whether it cuts off other functions or not, and so on. In the case of this Fifty Fathoms, it looks fine because it succeeds in all areas except the position (if you don't like the position), but that judgement should be made based on the totality of the facts: the more things the date fails at, the less necessary it is at all. Frankly, they should just produce a no-date variant for both the Bathyscaphe and the Fifty Fathoms, like we know they can do with the Mokarran and the Mil-Spec.

More posts: Fifty FathomsLange 1Saxonia

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