DMH stands for Dingemans Mechanische Horloges (Dingemans mechanical watches) and it is very likely that you've never heard of it before. With only 12 timepieces per year, owner Fred Dingemans creates customized timepieces in his workshop in a (very) quiet village in The Netherlands, using his own tooling and machinery.

Fred Dingemans' mission is to create mechanical timepieces, as much by his own hands as possible, involving the customer as much as possible and with a maximum of 12 watches a year. As you can see on the watch (two pictures below), it has some unconventional methods for mounting a dial and case, creating a water-resistant crown with a lock and so on. For example, the satinized stainless steel casing (316L steel) and the crown system is all made in-house.

If the customer wishes, he can have the crown placed on a different location (for people who wear their watch on the right wrist), choose his own dial color and have influence on the type of hands used. The latter wasn't really necessary when Fred Dingemans got his most recent assignment, to create his first Jumping Hours DMH timepiece.

Fred Dingemans uses (a.o.) TD mechanical movements in most cases, but other mechanical movements are - depending on availability - used as well. The Jumping Hour is the first timepiece created by DMH with an open dial. The result is stunning in our opinion, it reveals a bit of the mechanical movement and the jumping hour mechanism is clearly visible.

As you can see the Shell Cordovan strap suits the watch perfectly, a no-nonsense rugged strap for a rugged watch. The strap features a DMH signed buckle, also created and engraved by Fred.

Besides watches, Fred also takes care after his (mostly vintage) machinery all by himself. He sees his watches are purely functional, where design is less important. Although we applaud to these thoughts, the unique DMH design isn't bad at all in our opinion.

DMH timepieces have - of course - a waiting list, but you will surely forget about that quickly once you will receive the final product. As a customer, you will be involved in all stages of building the DMH timepiece. Giving and receiving feedback on your soon-to-be watch must be one of the most interesting activities during the process.

Prices start around 1000 EUR for a DMH timepiece. Contact DMH for more information.

Pedum is a Dutch brand by Peter Voeten and Elly Knepper. Both did the same study for goldsmith in Schoonhoven, The Netherlands.

Although his primarily task was designing and creating jewellery for a famous house of jewellers in Brussels, Peter started working on time pieces in the 1980s as well. After this company went bankrupt during rough times, Peter Voeten and Elly Knepper started a company in The Netherlands by the name of Pedum. Pedum has two pillars, one for horology and one for jewellery. Peter is focussing on the watches and creates exceptional pieces, in very limited numbers.

The craftsmanship in Pedum watches is mainly in the design, construction and finish of the used materials for the watch case, dial, case back and clasp. The clasp bears the logo of Pedum, feet. Pedum uses mechanical movements only, mainly ETA/Valjoux movements. The design of the Pedum watches is inspired by Jule Verne's 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea, as you can see by the looks of the watch casing.

The nautical look of the watch case with the large screws is clearly visible in the photograph above.

Last year, Pedum created a one-off time piece for an important customer in The Netherlands. The client requested Pedum to create an exclusive gold time piece with a tourbillon movement. Pedum uses a Progress-movement with a tourbillon. This movement can also be found in the Chronoswiss Régulateur Tourbillon and Alain Silberstein's Tourbillon time piece.

In the pictures below, you will see some photographs of the process of creating the Pedum Tourbillon time piece:

The drilling of the holes for the lugs is all done by Peter Voeten. Below, you'll see an almost finished case part of the Pedum watch, ready to be attached to the lower part.


Above, the case is complete and ready to be polished. Below you'll see a picture of an almost finished crown. Entirely made in-house by Pedum.

Not only the case, crown and clasp are created by Pedum, also the dial is hand made. First, a disc is being extracted from a flat square piece of gold. The numerals, hour markers and subdials are cut-out as well and place on the dial. A lot of proto-typing and aligning with the client is key here.

Ofcourse, the movement has to fit the dial, especially the space to demonstrate the tourbillon cage.

Will it fit? Below you see the result of true craftsmanship of a goldsmith annex watch maker! The gold dial with all the hand made applied numerals and details in combination with the Progress Tourbillon movement is a feast for the eyes of a watch aficionado.

The watch and strap are being finished by the aforementioned clasp with the 'foot' logo.

Et voila, the Pedum Tourbillon time piece, one of a kind! We can only imagine how the (sun)light will play with all the gold elements of the case, dial and applied numerals.


During the interview with Peter Voeten that I had, he told me that the creation process of such a complicated watch can't be expressed in an amount of hours. It took a lot of time to search for the right movement, the right combination of parts, the proto-typing of the dial etc.

Although Peter Voeten is not a watch collector himself, he surely enjoys the haute horlogerie time pieces of brands like Jaeger-LeCoultre. Keeping track of novelties in the haute horlogerie inspires him to think about creating new timepieces as well, using his own particular design and constructions.

Independent watchmaking is a trend, but not for the watchmakers who are doing so. They have been working on these watches for many years, thinking over their designs, the use of certain type of movements, dials and new materials. It seems that the watchmakers who have been working on their watches for so long now, finally gain the respect they reserve. It seems that people are fed up with the same old same old that the large watch companies and luxury groups are putting them up with.

If you are interested in independent watchmaking, one of the shows you've just got to attend this year is the Watch 2009, organized by (a.o) WatchUseek. I've visited Watch 2008 in Maastricht and I was more than impressed by the laid-back atmosphere, the exhibitors and the location. A report on this event can be read here.

The WatchUseek blog team will high-light a few of the watch brands attending the Watch 2009 in Maastricht and Hamburg. Today, it will be the fabulous watchmaking skills by Armin Mantei (named after the founder himself). Affordable handcrafted watches, made all by the master himself. And more, there will be only one of each watch, the so called 'Einzelstücke'.

A. Mantei watches are available in stainless steel only, but the dials are either silver or gold, but finished with pulverized enamel, as shown in the model above (Merak). The stainless steel watch cases are fairly big (approximately 42mm) but flat enough to make it a useable watch for all kinds of occasions.

Mantei watches are truly handcrafted, which means that no CNC-machines have been used, and the hands, dials and lunettes are all labour by hand. Because of this, Armin Mantei is able to create unique watches entirely based on the customer's demand. Opposite to a lot of other watchbrands who have their watches assembled and crafted somewhere else, Armin Mantei does everything by himself, except for creating the mechanical movement. However, he does make sure they are getting the right amount of attention.

The movements used are automatic mechanical movements by ETA. The A. Mantei models with hours, minutes, seconds (and some times datewindow) are powered by the proven ETA 2824-2 movement. The 'Benetnash' model for example, a chronograph, uses the famous ETA Valjoux 7750 movement and is nicely engraved by hand (as shown below).

Armin Mantei (1961) is a master watchmaker (Uhrmachermeister in German) since 1977 and started his own watch brand on the 21st of August 2007, almost 2 years ago.

His firm is located in the nortern part of Germany (above Hamburg) and besides the possibility of giving his store a visit, you can also order his watches on-line.

Make sure to pay the A. Mantei booth a visit when you are visiting the Watch 2009 event in Hamburg.

Let me start by saying that it is an honour for me to be on the team of bloggers for WatchUseek. Before I started my own blog (http://www.fratellowatches.com/) in 2004, I was quite a regular visitor / contributor here at WatchUseek. Actually, I think I was one of the first moderators of the Omega Forum here. Later on, the moderator of the Rolex Forum, but that didn't turn out to be a great success, since I was way too busy with my regular job (unfortunately not in the watch business) and my blog and several other watch related projects.

Anyhows, although I am not a regular poster anymore in the WatchUseek forums, I do keep track of some of the forums and the way WatchUseek is heading. The organization of the Watch events (2008 and 2009) is something that I really love and already covered a few times on my own website.

Location of the first Watch (2008) event in Maastricht, The Netherlands

So, what to expect from my blogging contributions here?

I will definately keep an eye on the Watch 2009 project that will be held later this year, and give you updates about it here in the blog section. Another subject that I cover a lot on my other blog are the independent watchmakers, and not only those who are able to manufacture everything by themselves, but also the private labels who are using existing movements (e.g. Rainer Nienaber, Linde Werdelin etc.).

So far for this small and first introduction, expect horological blog posts soon!