Last week I kicked off a mini-series where I’m finally taking some great books off my shelf and sharing them with the world. We covered a brand-backed “Grand Seiko” book by ERG Media, which set a great tone. This week we’re looking at another brand-focused tome, the much more recently released “Universal People, Universal Dreams,” which documents the hyper-focused collection of one man. But it’s more than a book about Universal Genève.
I first met the author and publisher, Luca Mignini, a few years ago, though I’m not exactly sure where. Maybe at an auction in Geneva? At some point, he just became a fixture in my vintage watch sphere, a person who could turn up anywhere there was a vintage watch. At the famed antique fair in Parma, Italy? Sure. He had a prototype Universal Genève Space Compax/Polerouter Sub dive watch made for the U.S. Navy, which I shared in my photo report from the fair.
Luca Mignini and Max Bernardini
On that same trip, he just randomly showed up as I was looking at photos of Patek 1518 dials with Max Bernardini (Uncle Max, to his close friends) at his shop right across the street from “The Last Supper” in Milan. That later encounter makes sense, as Bernardini (and his team, including Mauricio Gimenez, whom the book calls “The Trusted Advisor”) was instrumental in curating the collection.
Mignini frequently travels between his home in Rome and Milan, where he serves as a professor at Bocconi University. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mignini and Bernardini quietly strengthened their bond as the former traveled to lecture to a video camera in an empty classroom and looked for someone he could safely visit and whose conversations would occupy and enrich his time. Bernardini became that person; if you know him, that isn’t surprising in the least. Magnini’s passion for Universal started with a 1946 Tri-Compax ref. 22535 (found in Tokyo), and by then had blossomed into a grouping of watches that eventually turned into an incredibly impressive selection from one of the most diverse brand catalogs in vintage watches.
And boy, what a collection of watches Mignini has (even if he hates the term “collecting”). The book focuses entirely on 111 chronographs from a brand that has become one of the Mount Rushmore brands for vintage chronographs. The book doesn’t venture into territory already covered more than adequately in the scholarly and beautiful “The Polerouter” book from 2023; this one speaks more to me as someone always more attracted to UG chronographs than I ever was to the Polerouter. In fact, it makes me almost dangerously covetous.
Yes, I am biased—both Magnini and Bernardini are friends— but it’s a fantastic reference for watches that I (and likely most people) never knew existed (until Mignini shared them with me). It makes me disappointed that I didn’t have the funds to buy the A. Cairelli split when he offered it to me last year. But like my favorite books, it’s not a “look at these watches” bore and a “look at me” braggadocious tedium.
I have a few books that combine the age-old collector’s gallery catalog (or attempt at a catalog raisonné of a single brand assembled by a single collector) and are wonderful references, but they leave out the “why” of collecting. It’s the “why” that fascinates me, but it’s something that we often forget to ask, or people struggle to articulate. While Mignini breaks his collection down into discrete sections on Compur, Uni-Compax, Compax, Tri-Compax, etc., he weaves that in with his personal story of collecting and friendship.
The intro is written by both Bernardini and Magnini’s old boss, Carlos Abrams-Rivera, Former CEO of Kraft Heinz. Sections are dedicated to the people who have impacted his collecting journey, from Bernardini to his deputy, Gimenez, to Auro Montanari and Sandro Fratini, among others. It’s the personal touch that turns this from a reference that’s important to have into a book worth sitting down and reading.
Unsurprisingly, the book has a distinctly Italian flair, and so do many of the watches in it. That is where the team comes from, after all, and I imagine many of the watches were discovered there. The Italians squirreled away a lot of the best UG for decades and had a taste for picking up unique or prototype pieces that others might have been too confused or afraid to touch. Which ones in particular? Well, I’ll leave the best watches to be discovered. There is one Medico-Compax I want to ask for a standing right of first refusal on, but I’ll keep the specific example to myself. I don’t expect Luca is going to be letting go of any of these.
It’s great that people are publishing books on Universal again. Pietro Giuliano Sala’s book on Universal—previously the reference on the brand—is only just over 15 years old and now incredibly expensive and hard to find. The quality and feel of the book, however, don’t compare to this new release and “The Polerouter,” which makes “Universal People, Universal Dreams” feel like a great deal at $577. Yes, watch books are undoubtedly no small investment, but often they’re things I wish I had bought when I had the chance, and this is one I know I’ll be coming back to for a long time.
Photo credit: Greta Negrelli Pizzigoni, courtesy of the photographer and Luca Mignini. The book is available for sale on the “Universal People, Universal Dreams “website, or Bernardini Milano’s website.
