Using a basic movement and a whole dollop of upside-down thinking, it is possible to reinvent the traditional time display into something altogether more inventive. The options are far more limited, the ability to create and explore and develop far more restrained-but it’s possible. To benchmark that, developing a basic, time-only movement, using centuries of knowledge, costs about a million dollars, so you can imagine how much you’d have to spend-and therefore charge-to make something completely out there like an Urwerk.īut there is another way. An abstract case with normal hands and dial is nothing innovative in and of itself, and so the time and effort required to develop a display that reads in a novel way ends up costing some serious wedge. Why are all those crazy watches so expensive? Commonly, because a crazy watch needs a crazy display. That leads us, like frogs in a hot pan, to this, the Blue Planet. It’s a fine line between good nutso and just plain nutso.Īnd so, since 2012, CIGA Design has slowly been warming a growing audience to more and more outlandish designs, subtly introducing concepts-even with the packaging-that sow the seeds of something bigger. You have to earn the right to make nutso watches. But you can’t just shoot right out of the gate, guns blazing. Why should oligarchs have all the fun? And so he founded CIGA Design out of Shenzhen, China, using crowdfunding to make watches that bring to life the idea of affordable eccentricity. Industrial Designer Zhang Jianmin had exactly the same thought. But would it be so hard if, once, just once, a watchmaker found it in their heart to make an affordable, entry-level watch that exhibits some of the limitless thinking of the big boys? We’re talking watches that work better in art galleries than they do on wrists here. Urwerk is never going to flog as many UR 100s as Omega is Speedmasters. Limited runs of wild ideas built to the highest quality aren’t going to come cheap. MB&F, Urwerk, Jacob & Co.-amazing works of unrestrained creativity whose only downside is the astonishing barrier to entry. I get that not everyone loves watches that look like they’ve come straight from the brain of Willy Wonka’s more eccentric watchmaker cousin, but for those who do, for those who like their watchmaking to be as ballistic as an MGM-140, up until now your two choices to get one have been: be rich or be richer. Watch the comments fill up with people who absolutely love unbuttered crusts … Ever looked at watches that cost many hundreds of thousands-if not millions-and been bowled over by just how innovative, interesting and downright nuts they can be? Not necessarily how practical and wearable they are, rather the sheer expression of imagination on show that makes a Rolex Submariner seem as exciting as a slice of unbuttered bread-the crust to be specific.
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