BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
Corum is an oddity in the hierarchy of watchmakers, and I’m never sure where to place them. On the one hand, they make interesting-looking everyday watches, but they also make things like the Golden Bridge and the Lab 02. The watches we’re looking at today are not from these collections but rather the Admiral line. This range of watches can be identified easily by its 12-sided cases.
The number 12 is linked to 12 nautical pennants, signalling flags, used by sailing boats (Corum’s watches tend to be nautical in theme). If you’re wondering, a 12-sided shape is called a dodecagon.
There are six new watches in the Admiral 42 Automatic collection, and all of them feature a unique guilloché pattern called Grenadier fendu. This 3D motif was developed by the design team at Corum’s La-Chaux-de-Fonds workshop. The dials seem quite busy even though they only display the time and date. The press photos never sell it well (as I often say), but with the pattern and applied logo and markers and such, it seems crowded. There are some nice touches, such as those pennants I mentioned earlier, which are printed onto the edge of the dial. The hands and applied markers have SuperLumiNova to help them stand out. In case you hadn’t picked up on it, the diameter is 42mm.
The movement powering this watch is the automatic CO395. It’s surprisingly long lived for a watch movement; Corum has been putting it in its watches for over a decade. That might have something to do with the fact that the CO395 is an ETA 2895 underneath. It offers a 4Hz beat rate and 42-hour power reserve.
The six models come in two different dial colours. These are either black or blue. Each dial colour also has three choices of either a stainless steel bracelet, a colour coordinated leather strap with a steel case or a two-tone steel case and rose gold bezel/crown case.
This last version only comes on a leather strap, no two tone bracelets. The pricing is as follows: steel with alligator leather strap CHF4200 – steel with steel bracelet CHF4400 – steel with rose gold bezel/crown and alligator leather strap CHF7200.
Visit Corum here.
