With only flour, water, yeast and a dash of salt, bakers create countless types of bread.
With only three chords and a simple scale of five notes, blues musicians create a huge and varied universe of songs.
Success in each of these fields requires a delicate balance of just a few components-network as the ruthless work involved in creating a watchmaker of a display of a time.
Pared to the Essentials, a “two-hand” watch shows hours and minutes, while a “three-hand” also includes a second hand. But it is configured, a single watch presents one of the biggest challenges in the horological arts: only transfer time, and not anymore.
“Het creëren van een time-alleen-horloge dat prachtig geproportioneerd, prachtig gestileerd, uniek is ontworpen voor de eigen visie van de horlogemaker, misschien een beetje gebaseerd op geschiedenis, maar echt uniek voor hen is, en dat vervolgens combineert met ultieme kwaliteit-dat is extreem moeilijk om te doen,” Paul Boutros, hoofd van horloges voor Amerika in Phillips Auction House in New York, zei in een Recent interview. “Only a few have done well, but if you tie it around your wrist, it is different from everything.”
Perhaps the most important decision for a watchmaker who thinks a only-time watch is to be recorded or a second hand. And if there is one, should it be mounted if the hour and minute hands (known as a “middle second” hand) or in a sub-dial are placed (known as a “sub-second” or “small seconds” hand)?
Guido Terreni, the Chief Executive of Parmigiani Fleurier, describes the center of seconds as ‘sporty’, because most diving and car-racing watches use that design, and the subseconds as ‘classic’ because it reminds us of the appearance of a traditional pocket watch. But there is another choice: for the minimalist Tonda PF-Micro-Rotor model of the brand, “we have chosen not to have a seconds to give you this mood of the right balance between an elegant watch and sports watches,” Mr Terreni said. “It’s really in the middle.”
Classic strength
Because wristwatches came in style in the early 20th century, some successful formulas have only become classics that anchor house designs.
Examples of this are the Cartier tank of 1917, a shrinking rectangular two-handed two-handed in general as the timepiece that waved the world from pocket watches to wrist watches. Another is the Patek Philippe Calatrava ref. 96 of 1932, a round three -handed with a subseconds. The minimalist cams were formed from the same piece of metal as the case, a watchmaking first that became the de facto template for round wrist watches.
A century later, the wrist watch is no longer new, and yet the power of the simplest models with only time to put a watchmaker on the map remains strong.
Consider the independent watchmaker Rexhep Rexhepi born in Kosovo. After years of making complicated models in Geneva under the relatively obscure Akrivia label-included, his Esoteric 43-Millimeter Tourbillon Chiming Jump Hour watch introduced Mr. Rexhepi de 38-Millimeter Chronomètre. And in May 2024, Phillips sold A first-series Chronomètre Contemporain for more than $ 1.5 million; The original price was around $ 67,000.
“It’s completely stunning,” said Albert Ganjei, the founder of the Boston Retailer European Watch Company, about the success of Mr. Rexhepi. “My friends have orders with him who have not been fulfilled for three years.”
A similar story could be told about Qin Gan, an independent watchmaker in Chongqing, China. He had made complicated watches by hand for years, including one with a mechanical dragonfly that claps its wings, but last year his Pastoral II, a three-hand trade with a sub-second ($ 46,000), attracted the interest of serious collectors. Qin said his waiting list, just like Mr. Rexhepi’s, suddenly crossed three years.
“You are just looking for the NDE degree of that design, right?” asked Mark Cho, a watch collector and a co-founder of the men’s clothing store The Armory. “I think the Qin Gan really checks those boxes.”
Mr. Cho said he had a Pastoral II in order and that he had viewed a prototype in Hong Kong at the end of last year. The balance of elements on the dial, he said, is a fundamental part of his profession, along with the relationships of the 38.5 millimeter case. “You hold it and the balance of the thing in your hands is great, the feeling of that watch on your wrist is great. It fits in the body,” he said.
Bigger is not always better
Collectors accept that a measure of uncomfortable chunkiness is often part of a watch with multiple mechanical functions, but they expect that an only-time watch will be tight.
“We sold Sylvester Stallone’s grandmaster in June,” said Geoff Hess, the worldwide head of the watches at Sotheby’s in New York, referring to the $ 5.6 million sales From the Patek Philippe.
That watch of 47.7 millimeters, which is 16.07 millimeters thick to meet his 20 complications, is a ‘remarkable piece’, Mr Hess said, ‘but in many ways it was not wearable, because it is so complicated, and that is why even Sylvester Stallone preserved the sealed package.’
When he was asked about only time watches, Mr. Hess said he immediately “thought of the simplicity by Dufour.” The simplicity and duality are only time models with sub-seconds by Philippe Dufour, the celebrated Swiss independent watchmaker.
And in December 2024 Phillips hammered a price of $ 685,800 for a simple, originally around $ 35,000, and in June 2024 a price of $ 2.05 million for a duality, originally around $ 100,000.
Balancing the few elements involved in these published watches is no less challenging in making midrange models.
“When we start the design at Moser, we want to strip that design to the essence,” said Edouard Meylan, Chief Executive of H. Moser & Cie. “It has to work with two hands, even the seconds have to be removed.”
He said that when he and his teams rework designs after acquiring the brand in 2012, “my team could not recognize our own watches.”
“So I said:” Listen, boys, the goal is one day that we can remove the logo and people will acknowledge that it is a moser, “he continued. Nowadays the only time watches have no logo.
Mr Meylan also noted that the height-to-width ratio of the case is crucial in creating a display, a guideline echoed by Naoya Hida, the Japanese watchmaker whose time-only watches are made in modest dimensions of 36 and 37 millimeter.
A case and a movement can best come together, Mr Hida said, something that Mass-Market Watch brands cannot always achieve because “they have to create many size variations with one movement.”
After you have noticed the challenges of building a watch around an existing movement and the need to prevent you from ‘a hockeypuck’, Mr. Meylan said: “You really have to find something that is in balance, where you have the right movement, the right diameter and the right height, and at some point it will feel about. It is what you like.”
