Watch2008, The Netherlands
A few weeks ago I visited a watch event here in the Netherlands called Watch2008. It was held in an old Dutch castle and hosted several watchmakers that had something special to show.
The event for me had 3 highlights and I would like to share one (the biggest highlight IMHO) with you at DriveLikeAGirl. I was absolutely astonished by a Dutch (<– makes me a little proud) watchmaker called Christiaan van der Klaauw. Needless to say, the maker himself was not present but there were some very impressive timepieces by his hand on display.
Astrolabium
The one that blew me away was the so-called Astrolabium, here is a link to a high-res picture of it from the official website. Here is a detailed explanation of how the watch works, and here is a demonstration of the watch in action.
Here are some pictures of it from the event:
Notice in the picture above, on the back of the watch the rotor has a type of family crest on it with the company’s signature “claw”. The reason for this claw by the way has to do with the watchmakers last name (Van der Klaauw). Klaauw is an old fashioned way of writing the Dutch word “klauw” which means claw. So the watchmaker chose the claw of a bird-of-prey (falcon I think) as his signature, cool huh?
Here is a last minute letter I have written to Santa:
Dear Santa, I know it’s a bit late and all but do you think your elves can find some way in getting me one last X-mas gift? I swear I will never ask for anything again…….
Enjoy!
Vincent
Hi Vincent,
I love your post, and those watches are stunning. I would love to see them in real life
. I found some of them on sale at Watchbuys.com. However, it says call for price so I am guessing that means a lot!! 
. Do you know how much they cost? I would love a dressy watch like that. They are 40 mm so I could kinda sorta wear it 
.
Did you take the pictures (in your post above) of the Astrolabium yourself at the event?
Wow. Nice watch! Nice post! I wonder if this company has any US distributors?
What were the other 2 highlights you found interesting at this event?
Take care
Nazmul.
ok, first of all Merry X-mas everyone. It’s X-mas-morning here in the Netherlands.
. I will post them in a seperate post, because I’m not sure if I can edit this post.
To answer your questions, sorry the pictures weren’t my own, they came from the website of the watchmaker because they are higher in quality. I did however take some pictures (I was even allowed to hold the watch myself)
As for the price: the one I had in my hands (I was careful not to shake too much for fear of dropping it) costs € 38.500,-
(The gold version is actually listed for € 36.500,- but I believe this one was more expensive because it was numbered 000 out of 750 as in the first one finished, not sure about that though). In one of my pictures you can see the numbering on the back, I’ll post them right away.
Hi Vincent,
If you’d like to edit a post after it’s been published, just create a new post, and write in there that you want to merge this new post with the old one.
Merry Xmas,
Izabel.
[...] about my visit to a watch event called watch2008 and the fact that I was absolutely stunned by the Christiaan van der Klaauw Astrolabium. I also mentioned that this was one of three highlights at the [...]