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Hello friends ,
I turned 40 on May 10th, 2018. Tradition has it that you offer yourself a watch. As watchmaking addicts, the question we should be asking ourselves is, how to go beyond the simple act of buying ?
I’ve been blogging for about ten years, worked for Greubel Forsey, created the most disruptive media in watchmaking history. By elimination, what other aspect of the business did I still need to explore?
The answer was to design a watch, to travel to the end of watchmaking. But I’m not a designer, that’s rotten luck, isn’t it? The big question of watchmaking is design, as demonstrated by the success of The Royal Oak, the Nautilus, the Luminor and so on.
When you are blogger, you are regularly contacted by young creators wishing to test their concept.
Three years ago, some Belgian guy called David Rutten came to me to ask my opinion about his watch. The man just blew the roof off! He presented me the most groundbreaking and accomplished project I had seen in ages. The design was pure and radical. It was an impactful project, a meteorite blowing the Gulf of Mexico into stardust.
Rutten is simply the new Genta.
At this very moment, I felt like De Niro in Analyze This.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=218iXiKhKlg
In this bloody life, you just can’t miss out this kind of chance, because you might never get it again…
It is a dark time the business is tracking fashion trends like cars or clothes. All it takes is a brand to come up with a weak idea and everyone else… The XXL watches fashion, then neo vintages, blue dials, white dials for the Chinese, etc., all of them are good examples of that.
It takes more than a pleasant or well-priced product - see this excellent article : https://imgur.com/a/6CNO8 - to start a new brand.
What you need is a heavy concept, a flawless pitch and a ****ing radical design.
The very second when David Rutten started to tell me about “Meteorite”, he pronounced the word that drives you mad. A few weeks earlier I had seen the De Bethune’s Dream Watch 5, crafted from a meteorite block. One of the most powerful pieces I’ve ever held in my hands (LINK Foudroyante album DB). 450.000 euros. Ouch… Thus, this extraordinary piece suffered from the endemic disease of watchmaking prices.
Instead our decision is to base the production of the project on the meteorite, in order to make this unique metal affordable.
As it randomly falls from space from the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter, lies 320 million kilometers away. We must look at the creation of the universe to understand the value of this metal.
13.8 billion years ago, in the middle of an abyssal darkness of an infinite density and a deafening silence: BANG.
The two primal atoms, hydrogen and helium, came into being, forming the stars. Then, in their wake, the nucleosynthesis generated the elements. Over the course of cyclopean stellar detonations, some atoms spread out, agglomerated and ended up forming planets, or for the less fortunate, asteroids…
The cores of the asteroids are made of iron and nickel. Unlike planets, asteroids went extinct veeery slowly… Without thermal conduction and at the mercy of collisions. The solidification process experienced an enthalpy of approximately 1C° every million year, which led to the fact that the most massive bodies took more than a billion years to solidify .
This considerable delay combined with zero gravity brought forth a phenomenon that’s impossible to replicate on earth the typical alloy of iron and nickel organised according to an eight-sided crystal structure called Widmanstätten pattern.
But before cutting the octahedrite and find out whether its pattern is exploitable, we need to get our hands on it. In the best-case scenario, there about 3 tons a year of exploitable metal meteorite falling on earth to compared with the 3000 tons of gold mined every year.
Between : private collectors, research, museums, all of them own most of it, and there’s only a small amount of octahedrite available on the market every year, which imparts exclusivity. Even if we could, commercially speaking, we would still be forced to limit our production to just a few hundred pieces per year.
Since octahedrite has been central in this project, David radically chose an guichet watch to maximize the space for the raw material. An additional bonus of this design is an immersion into the 30’s to the 60’s, at a time when watch design was at its pinnacle. Today as in the past, watchmakers worthy of the name swear by art deco. Guichet watches with analog discs emerged in the 20’s-30’s. The Roaring twenties, following WW1, witnessed the massification of the first wristwatches, designed to coordinate charges into the trenches. Wristwatches also meant new problem of glass breakage. This need to decrease the exposed surface of glass combined with art deco inspired a new style of sport watch. Reverso on the one hand, and guichet watches on the other hand… Along with the cushion cases before the emergence of Panerai, this shape is among those who have been left out of contemporary design. David was able to feel the mysterious power of guichet watches laying low under the casing when he set his eyes on them. This required the eye of the designer, trained at La Cambre® (THE best design school in Belgium, which means the best in the world - David told me about the teaching: a blend of the Dirty Dozen’s training and Ikki’s from Knights of the Zodiac).
The three main ideas that were behind the creation of the Streamline were: retro science fiction, especially the Space Opera from the 40-50’s, all chrome-plated and curved. Unfortunately government money ran out, and David had to settle for a telescope and a meteorite collection to satisfy his passion for space, grounded by the Earth looking at its feet… While wandering into the cosmos may not be realistic, he wanted to spread his appreciation of the extraterrian metal, providing watches exclusively made out of meteorite.
In order to enhance this retro design, David provided the DR01 with vertical gadroons in line with the streamline spirit, this art deco sub-genre, indissociable from the golden age of the American dream. We still have in mind the gorgeous trains and buses, the creation of which was partly made by the French man Raymond Loewy… This design and its retro SF look remains the swansong of modernism, and the allegory of the American way of life.
I know a little bit about design, and I am a sensitive connoisseur of watchmaking, so the moment David introduced this work to me, I knew I was dealing with a genius designer, and that I no choice but to get involved in the project. I don’t want to be telling my grandchildren that I let the Union Pacific M-10004 go by. To conduct this project, David needed a watchmaking expertise, a guide in this brass-teeth shark tank.
Our first challenge was to find a movement. We’re providing a genuine watch, that means that this piece is built around its movement. More specifically, the size of the discs of jumping-hour complication was the condition for the opening of the aperture, as well as the size of the case and ultimately the design details like the number of gadroons...
At this stage, we were not expecting to waste 18 months of our precious time on this step. We sought most market players (with the notable exception of Swatch Group), going from failure to frustration. As surprising as it may seem, only Vincent Calabrese and our supplier truly master this the in-line jumping hour. Most of jumping-hours on the market are in parallel, and therefore suitable for round cases. We had to turn a quite reasonable offer from Vincent Calabrese down because he wanted to work on a 2892 base. Indeed, the overall cost of raw material and the complex machining of the meteorite (both hard and inhomogeneous)approaches the cost of a machined gold case. Knowing this, there was no way we could board on this costly case a Valjoux.
Our calibre had to be good-looking, of a large diameter, easy to handle, featuring a plate with discs in line, as well as an affordable and a customised cut of the bridges… that’s squaring the circle. We knocked countless doors, I racked up the kilometers drifting through Jura mountains. Nothing, going just empty-handed. Always the same old highwayman conditions.
I turned 40 on May 10th, 2018. Tradition has it that you offer yourself a watch. As watchmaking addicts, the question we should be asking ourselves is, how to go beyond the simple act of buying ?
I’ve been blogging for about ten years, worked for Greubel Forsey, created the most disruptive media in watchmaking history. By elimination, what other aspect of the business did I still need to explore?
The answer was to design a watch, to travel to the end of watchmaking. But I’m not a designer, that’s rotten luck, isn’t it? The big question of watchmaking is design, as demonstrated by the success of The Royal Oak, the Nautilus, the Luminor and so on.
When you are blogger, you are regularly contacted by young creators wishing to test their concept.
Three years ago, some Belgian guy called David Rutten came to me to ask my opinion about his watch. The man just blew the roof off! He presented me the most groundbreaking and accomplished project I had seen in ages. The design was pure and radical. It was an impactful project, a meteorite blowing the Gulf of Mexico into stardust.
Rutten is simply the new Genta.
At this very moment, I felt like De Niro in Analyze This.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=218iXiKhKlg
In this bloody life, you just can’t miss out this kind of chance, because you might never get it again…
It is a dark time the business is tracking fashion trends like cars or clothes. All it takes is a brand to come up with a weak idea and everyone else… The XXL watches fashion, then neo vintages, blue dials, white dials for the Chinese, etc., all of them are good examples of that.
It takes more than a pleasant or well-priced product - see this excellent article : https://imgur.com/a/6CNO8 - to start a new brand.
What you need is a heavy concept, a flawless pitch and a ****ing radical design.
The very second when David Rutten started to tell me about “Meteorite”, he pronounced the word that drives you mad. A few weeks earlier I had seen the De Bethune’s Dream Watch 5, crafted from a meteorite block. One of the most powerful pieces I’ve ever held in my hands (LINK Foudroyante album DB). 450.000 euros. Ouch… Thus, this extraordinary piece suffered from the endemic disease of watchmaking prices.
Instead our decision is to base the production of the project on the meteorite, in order to make this unique metal affordable.
As it randomly falls from space from the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter, lies 320 million kilometers away. We must look at the creation of the universe to understand the value of this metal.
13.8 billion years ago, in the middle of an abyssal darkness of an infinite density and a deafening silence: BANG.
The two primal atoms, hydrogen and helium, came into being, forming the stars. Then, in their wake, the nucleosynthesis generated the elements. Over the course of cyclopean stellar detonations, some atoms spread out, agglomerated and ended up forming planets, or for the less fortunate, asteroids…
The cores of the asteroids are made of iron and nickel. Unlike planets, asteroids went extinct veeery slowly… Without thermal conduction and at the mercy of collisions. The solidification process experienced an enthalpy of approximately 1C° every million year, which led to the fact that the most massive bodies took more than a billion years to solidify .
This considerable delay combined with zero gravity brought forth a phenomenon that’s impossible to replicate on earth the typical alloy of iron and nickel organised according to an eight-sided crystal structure called Widmanstätten pattern.
But before cutting the octahedrite and find out whether its pattern is exploitable, we need to get our hands on it. In the best-case scenario, there about 3 tons a year of exploitable metal meteorite falling on earth to compared with the 3000 tons of gold mined every year.
Between : private collectors, research, museums, all of them own most of it, and there’s only a small amount of octahedrite available on the market every year, which imparts exclusivity. Even if we could, commercially speaking, we would still be forced to limit our production to just a few hundred pieces per year.
Since octahedrite has been central in this project, David radically chose an guichet watch to maximize the space for the raw material. An additional bonus of this design is an immersion into the 30’s to the 60’s, at a time when watch design was at its pinnacle. Today as in the past, watchmakers worthy of the name swear by art deco. Guichet watches with analog discs emerged in the 20’s-30’s. The Roaring twenties, following WW1, witnessed the massification of the first wristwatches, designed to coordinate charges into the trenches. Wristwatches also meant new problem of glass breakage. This need to decrease the exposed surface of glass combined with art deco inspired a new style of sport watch. Reverso on the one hand, and guichet watches on the other hand… Along with the cushion cases before the emergence of Panerai, this shape is among those who have been left out of contemporary design. David was able to feel the mysterious power of guichet watches laying low under the casing when he set his eyes on them. This required the eye of the designer, trained at La Cambre® (THE best design school in Belgium, which means the best in the world - David told me about the teaching: a blend of the Dirty Dozen’s training and Ikki’s from Knights of the Zodiac).
The three main ideas that were behind the creation of the Streamline were: retro science fiction, especially the Space Opera from the 40-50’s, all chrome-plated and curved. Unfortunately government money ran out, and David had to settle for a telescope and a meteorite collection to satisfy his passion for space, grounded by the Earth looking at its feet… While wandering into the cosmos may not be realistic, he wanted to spread his appreciation of the extraterrian metal, providing watches exclusively made out of meteorite.
In order to enhance this retro design, David provided the DR01 with vertical gadroons in line with the streamline spirit, this art deco sub-genre, indissociable from the golden age of the American dream. We still have in mind the gorgeous trains and buses, the creation of which was partly made by the French man Raymond Loewy… This design and its retro SF look remains the swansong of modernism, and the allegory of the American way of life.
I know a little bit about design, and I am a sensitive connoisseur of watchmaking, so the moment David introduced this work to me, I knew I was dealing with a genius designer, and that I no choice but to get involved in the project. I don’t want to be telling my grandchildren that I let the Union Pacific M-10004 go by. To conduct this project, David needed a watchmaking expertise, a guide in this brass-teeth shark tank.
Our first challenge was to find a movement. We’re providing a genuine watch, that means that this piece is built around its movement. More specifically, the size of the discs of jumping-hour complication was the condition for the opening of the aperture, as well as the size of the case and ultimately the design details like the number of gadroons...
At this stage, we were not expecting to waste 18 months of our precious time on this step. We sought most market players (with the notable exception of Swatch Group), going from failure to frustration. As surprising as it may seem, only Vincent Calabrese and our supplier truly master this the in-line jumping hour. Most of jumping-hours on the market are in parallel, and therefore suitable for round cases. We had to turn a quite reasonable offer from Vincent Calabrese down because he wanted to work on a 2892 base. Indeed, the overall cost of raw material and the complex machining of the meteorite (both hard and inhomogeneous)approaches the cost of a machined gold case. Knowing this, there was no way we could board on this costly case a Valjoux.
Our calibre had to be good-looking, of a large diameter, easy to handle, featuring a plate with discs in line, as well as an affordable and a customised cut of the bridges… that’s squaring the circle. We knocked countless doors, I racked up the kilometers drifting through Jura mountains. Nothing, going just empty-handed. Always the same old highwayman conditions.
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