Chronographs watches

Three very different makers meet under this name: Damasko and Laco from Germany, and Furlan Marri from Geneva. They share the stopwatch function and little else.

Damasko was formed in 1994 in Barbing, Germany, around Konrad Damasko's materials work, and makes its watches in a nickel-free, nitrogen-enriched martensitic steel hardened to as much as 64 HRC. The DC56, DC57 and DC58 share a 40 mm case 13.8 mm thick; the DC57 has a white dial where the DC56's is black, and the DC56 is certified as an official watch for Eurofighter test pilots. The DC66 and DC67 grow to 43.8 mm, the DC66 with a 60-minute diving bezel and the DC67 with a 12-hour bezel. The 42 mm DC80 and DC82 also take a 12-hour bezel, and the DC80 comes in green, orange and yellow versions as well as bicolour.

Laco was founded in Pforzheim in 1925 by Frieda Lacher and Ludwig Hummel, and was one of the five makers of the B-Uhr, the Luftwaffe's observation watch. Its chronographs are named after places. The Atlanta, Detroit and Seattle are 42 mm quartz chronographs, 10 mm thick. The 44 mm Monte Carlo has day and date, and its rotor shows through the caseback; Laco uses the ETA 7750, which it calls the Laco 50, in many of its automatic chronographs. The Hockenheim puts a tachymeter bezel on a 42 mm case.

Furlan Marri, the brand of Andrea Furlan and Hamad Al Marri, launched its chronograph on Kickstarter in 2021. It takes the Patek Philippe 1463, Patek's first waterproof chronograph, as its starting point: a 38 mm case, 11.2 mm thick, with grooved, slightly conical pushers. Inside is Seiko's VK64 meca-quartz, quartz for the time and a mechanical chronograph that starts, stops and resets like a traditional one. The launch dials were the Laccato Nero (1022-A), the Farro (1022-B), the Havana Salmon (1031-A), Mr. Grey (1041-A) and the two-tone Tasti Tondi, named after the 1463's nickname, Italian for round buttons. The Farro and Havana Salmon were Kickstarter exclusives.