The Presidents And Vulcain - Over To You Barack Obama For A Cricket Two-fer

So apart from other semi-interesting, yet quirky factoids about the Vulcain Cricket and the President of the United States there is one fairly interesting one that stands out -

Only 2 US Presidents since its invention and release in 1947 have not owned a Vulcain Cricket.  John F. Kennedy, and George W. Bush.

Now the speculation as to why JFK never received a Vulcain Cricket can finally be resolved fairly simply - Vulcain never gave a Cricket to a US President, therefore unless he bought one, or was given one by a third party, there was never any reason that JFK would have owned a Vulcain Cricket. Because again, Vulcain (the main Swiss company) never gave a US President a Vulcain Cricket, until...

2008 saw the election of Barack Obama. It represented quite a few firsts, but insofar as watch history goes, this was the first time that Vulcain - the Swiss Vulcain, ever gave a Vulcain Cricket to a sitting US President.

It is worth noting, this was the second iteration of Vulcain. The brand had been bought by a group known as Production et Marketing Horologer or PMH.  This new iteration of Vulcain went "live" again in 2001 and moved the brand HQ to Le Locle. Michel Ditisheim was brought in as a consultant to the brand.

But almost as if trying to make up for a missed President, Keijo Paajanen, quite on his own, sent a Vulcain Cricket from his family's collection to President Obama. While nobody seems to know for certain, it is believed that the Anniversary Skeleton model that was presented to President Obama is most likely in the National Archives as he was never seen wearing it. The same is likely true for the model sent by Keijo -

Courtesy of the Paajanen Family

As best as can be ascertained, this would be one of the last Vulcain Crickets presented by the Paajanen family.

Courtesy of the Paajanen Family Collection

We have two more presidents to go, so tune in again as the Cricket hops to the wrist of Amtrak Joe.

A funny thing happened on the way to Las Vegas

The past week I've been grinding away, trying to get the Chronometers.org site updated for the Las Vegas show and the various brands I will be meeting there. 

I checked into the control panel for Tempus Fugit and saw an unbelievable amount of traffic from a political blog on Yahoo -
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-financial-forms-show-big-jp-morgan-account-213119081.html

This led to the single biggest one-day amount of readers my little "bloggy-wog" has had EVER.  Essentially the article was about the financial disclosures of President Obama, and Vice President Biden.  You scroll all the way down to the bottom, and there is a reference to a Vulcain Cricket that Vice President Biden received while on a state visit to Helsinki, Finland.


So for those of you who didn't see it way back in 2010 -

Vulcain Cricket - the (semi) untold story

Okay, I realize that many of you out there have never been to Finland, and even if you have, you may not have visited Helsinki. And even if you have visited Helsinki, you may never have visited a small family jeweler down town just off the Esplanade. And unless you were there between 1995 and 2000 or 2001, you would not have cause to know that in that little shop they were selling the Vulcain Cricket - AND - they were maintaining the tradition of presenting a Vulcain Cricket watch to any US president who happened to have visited Finland. This tradition started with Harry Truman and continued for a brief period, but then stopped for many years. Vulcain presented a watch to Truman, to Eisenhower and to LBJ. And while it is true that later presidents received one, it was not from Vulcain.



Flash forward about 30 years or so.  It was simply dumb luck that I discovered the Vulcain Cricket one day. It was a Friday afternoon and I had just returned to Helsinki after my Summer teaching job at St. Andrews in Scotland.  I had finished a teaching job with Nokia, not too far away and had some time to kill, and so I was doing some window shopping.  At the time I was obsessed with the idea of owning a Rolex GMT with the blue and red bezel - confession time, I am a HARD CORE Magnum PI fan all the way back to jump street.


And there it was in a window on the first floor of a shopping center. There were stainless steel, and stainless steel with gold bezels. It was beyond infatuation, but not quite love, not yet...

This is not one of the Vulcain Crickets that was presented to the US Presidents past and present in Finland. This is the one that the new Vulcain company presented to President Obama following his inauguration and the photo is courtesy of the Vulcain Press/PR department, so credit please where it is due.


Not so long ago, Vulcain was bought and sold once again. They have definitely put some research and development money into the new line, and they are beautiful watches.

To be clear, I think that it is wonderful that Vulcain is back and making the Cricket again.  But for those of you who were not aware, the brand for at least a small period of time was owned and operated by Revue Thommen.  And under special license they produced and manufactured a limited number of "Vulcain Cricket" watches for this jeweler in Helsinki.  The jeweler would then present one each time a US President or former US President would visit Finland.  The list included Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan (I believe) and Bill Clinton as well as George Bush Senior.  Let's be clear about something else - this was not the watch company stumping up the money to do so, this was a small family jeweler that did this.  This was just as the internet was in its infancy (certainly by today's standards) and the Facebook founders were probably years away from even working on their college applications. In other words - from a PR perspective - there was not much in it for them.

So remember that it is not always a large company backing PR initiatives, and giving things away. Sometimes it is a small family business far away from the watch making world, doing it because of their passion for what they are selling.


To see today's Vulcain watches, you can check out their collection here:



http://www.vulcain-watches.ch/
Posted 7th October 2010 by James