ReviewWildlife Shenanigans: Graham Chronofighter Vintage Special Tiger And Bear

What Spanish artist and founder of the revolutionary art movement Cubism, Pablo Picasso, had said—“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist”—applies to the two new animal-themed iterations of the Graham Chronofighter Vintage Special Bear and Vintage Special Tiger. Here, the bear and a tiger cub go on a rampage. Both have dislodged the 12 o’clock hour marker in their own dials, but under different temperaments. The baby tiger has plonked right in between the ‘1’ and ‘2’; causing these numerals to fall in a tilt on the neighbouring stick indices. With its baby blue eyes, the cub fixes the wearer with an innocent stare, unaware of the damage it has caused and the scowl it has incited from an adult tiger, presumably its parent, who loops through the 30-minute chronograph counter at six o’clock and out of the small seconds sub-dial at three o’clock. The bear, on the other hand, appears blinded with rage. It has uprooted the numeral ‘1’ in 12 with its molars, displaced the ‘H’ of Graham with one claw, the Arabic hour marker ‘2’ in the other claw; stomped over the outer minute tracker with one leg and the sub-dial with the other. The only difference between the two models is the absence of the small seconds sub-dial in the bear iteration.

Vintage Special: Animal Instincts

The new Vintage Special is a departure from the titillating dials of the previous edition titled Nose Art Ltd—a nod to the World War II tradition of painting pinups on the fuselage/nose of war aircraft to distract the ‘men in uniform’ from looming death—that illustrated real-life glamour girls from the 1940s and 50s, namely Belle, Linda, Lucia, and Chloe, striking erotic poses with full red lips, ‘barely there’ hemlines and racy garters.

There was the Chronofighter Vintage Aircraft Flying Tigers watch that paid tribute to ‘Flying Tigers’—a volunteer group comprising three US fighter squadrons of pilots­—and to the sacrality of the tiger in Chinese culture. Look wise, this new line resembles the Flying Tigers watch as the head of a Bengal Tiger—the group’s insignia—forms the background of the six o’clock sub-dial. Limited to 100 pieces each, the new iterations, titled Vintage Special Bear and Vintage Special Tiger, have a Jungle Book kind of childlike disposition.

To uplift the illustrative quality, the dials are sun brushed, featuring a radial gradient and are multi-layered with nano-printed animals. The matching hour and minutes hands, red-tipped hands, numerals, and indexes, are filled with Super-LumiNova, for optimal readability in low-light conditions. Creating a tiny ripple pool at six o’clock is the snailed minute counter with a stubby orange hand. A date-day display with a limited-edition number underneath, sits at nine o’clock.

The Animal Inside

Powered by the in-house calibre G1745, the automatic chronograph beats at 28,800vph with a power reserve of up to 48 hours. The inbuilt Chronofiable^®-certified Incabloc shock absorber is an added layer of protection, mitigating impact from shakes and jolts. Water-resistant to 100m, the 44mm steel case has a fast-action start/stop trigger on the left side and a steel reset pusher. A highly polished steel bezel protects the dial’s timekeeping elements with the antireflective sapphire crystal glass sitting atop. In a similar fashion, transparent sapphire crystal seals off the caseback, displaying the movement, alive and ticking with its 25 jewels. The Graham Chronofighter Vintage Special Bear and Vintage Special Tiger models are attached to hand-sewn black calf leather straps secured to steel pin buckles.

Using animals as dial decoration might not appease purists. However, some cultures believe moving animals generate creativity and positive chi energies. Also, the combination of fiery yellows and browns on black is a winning colour scheme. A different perception then, is the key to embracing an unconventional, yet charming horological design.