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Jill Newman

Jill is an award-winning journalist who has covered the jewelry, watches, and luxury markets for more than 25 years. She is a contributor to Town & Country, WSJ Magazine, and other international media platforms. Her work has taken her to diamond and gem mines across the African continent and watch workshops and ateliers in Switzerland’s Jura Mountains.

Jill Newman's Articles

The Reverso watch — culture
An Iconic Japanese Woodblock Print, Translated Into a Wrist-Sized Wonder
One of the biggest challenges for any great brand is to evolve and remain relevant while staying true to its roots. Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso timepiece, which celebrates its 90th anniversary this year, is a brilliant example of an accessory that is both immediately recognizable—its elegant rectangular case, as its name suggests, cleverly slides out of the watch holder and flips over, to showcase either the face or the back—and that has been continually reimagined in inventive and unexpected ways.

Gold jewelry from Loren Teetelli’s Viking Trove collection. — culture
Two Millennial Jewelers Practicing the Ancient Art of Goldsmithing
The archeologist-turned-goldsmith Loren Teetelli spent more than 100 hours hand-forging a single 22-karat gold cuff for her new Viking Trove collection to create distinctive, textured finishes that evoke an ancient treasure, much like the kinds of artifacts she studied years earlier, while interning as an objects conservator at the American Museum of Natural History. Teetelli is among a handful of young jewelers who are using centuries-old goldsmith techniques—such as sawing, soldering, engraving, and embossing precious metals and gemstones—to craft contemporary pieces with a soulfulness and rich detailing that couldn’t be achieved with casting, the common method of jewelry-making today. “There’s something beautiful and special about a piece when you can see marks left by the hand of its maker,” says the 30-year-old designer, who established her Los Angeles brand, Loren Nicole, in 2016. Jean Prounis is another millennial who’s mastered the time-honored craft of goldsmithing. The New York–based designer begins her process by melting gold metal scraps, then blends them with small amounts of copper and silver to achieve a warm, sun-kissed 22-karat gold alloy that’s malleable enough to twist, hammer, and granulate, a procedure that involves attaching tiny spheres in areas of a piece to achieve a textured pattern. “Creating jewelry in [this material] is a way to continue telling the stories of jewelry that was made centuries earlier,” Prounis says. Her work references ancient Greco-Roman and Egyptian civilizations while instilling a sense of modernity with its larger-scale forms, such as her classical boat-shaped hoop earrings and supple, hand-woven chains.

Two Cartier watches — culture
nature
future
Cartier’s First Solar-Powered Watch Features Straps Made From Food Scraps
When Louis Cartier designed the Tank watch, in 1917, its rectangular dial was a bold departure from the round cases of the era. Inspired by an aerial view of the combat vehicle for which it was named, the model’s clean shape hasn’t aged a bit over the years, as the Tank’s quiet, strategic evolution has allowed it to maintain its relevance while preserving the purity of its design. In the 1970s, when the rising popularity of quartz watches sent the mechanical-focused Swiss watch market into a downward spiral, the French company released the more affordable Must de Cartier Tank with a vermeil case, quartz movement, and lacquer dials in colors including red, blue, and black. A symbol of modern luxury, the Tank has long been favored by the style-, design-, and art-minded (Jackie Kennedy and Andy Warhol were among its fans). Even over the past few decades, when bigger, bolder, and more complicated timepieces have been all the rage, the model has held its own as an elegant and timeless standout.

A navy blue watch on a desk next to a picture of the moon — culture
A. Lange & Söhne’s Latest Timepieces Transform a Wrist Into a Site of Wonder
Since ancient times, people have looked to the sun, moon, and stars to create a sense of rhythm and order in their lives. It’s what led the Greeks to invent the Antikythera mechanism, a 2,000-year-old handheld device that predicted astronomical events, such as the movement of the planets and lunar eclipses, and formed the foundation for today’s moonphase watch complication, which portrays our satellite’s shifting shape. Many horologists have mastered the functionality, but few have perfected it with such precision and ingenuity as the legendary German watchmaker A. Lange & Söhne, which has been re-envisioning moonphase timepieces over the past three decades and has 13 models in its current collection. Its recently unveiled Little Lange 1 Moon Phase watch elevates the poetic movement with a copper-flecked, midnight-blue silver dial that shimmers like the night sky, and depicts, beneath the brand’s signature outsize date, the appearance of the moon as it waxes and wanes. Housed within a white-gold case with a diamond-encrusted bezel, the hand-assembled watch’s lunar display will remain accurate for 122.6 years (should anyone live long enough to test it out).