I opened up my email this morning to find this: a beautiful full-body men’s divers’ watch image, a new bronze version of the Tudor Black Bay 58. The 39 mm bronze case is a nod aesthetically to the bronzes on old ships and deep-sea diving equipment. And that’s what we love about it. It’s for the true watch sophisticate. These are people that aren’t interested in wearing the most expensive hunk of metal on their wrist. They get the story behind these pieces.
Related: Into the dark: The all-new Tudor Black Bay Ceramic
For the first time the Tudor Black Bay 58 model has a bronze bracelet fitted with a new “T Fit” clasp with a rapid adjustment system that’s part of it. The satin-brushed bronze-brown palette adorns the dial and bezel. It’s a diver’s watch filled with naval inspiration. The Black Bay 58 Bronze model has a dial based on Tudor divers’ watches produced during the 1950’s.
Canada’s best luxury website: Tudor’s rich history with the divers’ watch
The history of the Tudor divers’ watch dates all the way back to 1954, with the reference 7922. Since then some of the greatest militaries in the world have sworn by its precision and reliability. It’s a beautiful watch but it’s also for the man’s man, made for an active lifestyle, waterproof to 100 metres (330 feet). As a spokesperson for Tudor says, it’s a “tool-watch” of the brand.
The Manufacture Calibre MT5400 displays hour, minute and second functions. The rotor for the Tudor Black Bay 58 Bronze in tungsten mono bloc is openwork and satin-brushed with sand-blasted details. Its bridge and mainplate have alternate sand-blasted, polished surfaces and laser decorations.
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A highly coveted adjustable clasp
“Tudor has managed to impress with ever more relevant novelties in the Black Bay line,” says Colin Potts, owner of Watch Off the Cuff, a Milton-based luxury watch service and repair company. Potts also just rolled out his own luxury watch brand, Jakob Eitan. He’s also written several times for Regarding Luxury on the topic of men’s luxury watches.
“The Black Bay Fifty-Eight Bronze has done what seems to elude many manufactures, delivering what the watch collecting community wants on multiple levels,” Potts says. “First is continuing to work in the Fifty-Eight case size of 39mm. Secondly is to provide a matching metal bracelet with the riveted bracelet design – which I think is very exciting in Bronze.
“Thirdly by providing a bracelet with adjustable clasp, something sorely missed when not part of a dive watches design, and highly coveted when done right. While Tudor continues to make great improvements and novelties, they very astutely keep design features that have become the hallmark of the modern Tudor Black Bays, like coin edge bezels, aluminium inserts and domed crystals.”
Other features about the new Tudor Black Bay 58 Bronze: shaded matt “brown-bronze” dial with applied hour markers and Arabic numerals at 3, 6, and 9 o’clock. It has “snowflake” hands, one of the hallmarks of the Tudor divers’ watches introduced in 1969.
The case is made of a high-performance aluminium bronze alloy used in naval engineering. That’s used mainly for submerged parts of ships required to show a high level of resistance to corrosion, such as propellers. The watch also comes with a fabric strap.
