Artists Thukral and Tagra are luxury watchmaker Rado’s first Indian collaborators for the True Square series

Sumir Tagra (left) and Jiten Thukral travelled to Switzerland before the pandemic, to meet the design team at the Rado atelier.

The designer scrapbook that Rado sent out at the launch of its new watch, True Square: Over the Abyss by Thukral and Tagra, has striking drawings and images of the watch in various stages of evolution. The sketches offer an insight into what went into the making of Rado’s first Indian design collaboration for its True Square designer watch series, besides artists Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra’s notes (with words scoured out and overwritten) on the inspiration and thought.

The two multidisciplinary artists are well-known in the world of contemporary Indian art for their exuberant scaled up works that span paintings, installations, interactive games, video performances and design.

Rado collaborates with several designers across the globe for the True Square Designer Series, and among their past collaborators have been Swiss design studio Big-Game, American interior designer Sam Amoia, French designer Philippe Nigro and Japanese Kunihiko Morinaga.

The evolution of True Square: Over the Abyss

The design journey began two years ago, when Rado approached Thukral and Tagra to create a watch that resonated with India but had a global appeal. Much like their work that connects communities, True Square: Over the Abyss’s 37 spokes, which look like a fire burst in the middle of the dial, representing the 37 time zones.

True Square: Over the Abyss is a collaboration between Rado and Indian artists Thukral & Tagra.

They are a way of “connecting the different communities world over”, says Tagra “through the various time zones. Cultural design often reflects the world at that moment, is indigenous and yet has a global appeal. So, what is Indian about Over the Abyss? I would say vibrancy, which is a characteristic that also defines our work.”

On the rear of the watch case is a digitally printed image of a painting from the artists’ Dominus Aeris series that explores the idea of migration.

The timepiece has an analogue display made up of two overlapping dials, allowing the wearer to think about the time in other countries around the world, besides their own. As these dials move, they create ever-shifting patterns across the watch face.

Thukral and Tagra’s art, often described as social design, focuses on the relationship of individuals with communities. The name True Square: Over the Abyss, says Tagra, is derived from the concept of the abyss, “that deepest space which we are all looking into while hovering around the edges”.

Before the pandemic, the two had made a trip to Rado’s atelier in Switzerland to understand the process and meet the design team who manage the tiniest of details that go into the making of their watches. “We initially wanted to create a design that was not sitting too well with certain tests. If a wearer was to inadvertently drop the watch, the dial would break. This is where the design team’s expertise comes in.”

The Rado laboratory, he adds, is “very high-tech and robotic. There is an assembly line where each little piece of the watch is joined with the hand.” Creating the timepiece was a challenge, say the artists whose installations are often gigantic. “As the scale reduces and comes down to 1.5 inches, designing becomes more challenging and you need to know what precisely will go out there.”

The material palette and tech specs

Rado is known to be a master of materials. The 38mm dial is set in a matt blue high-tech ceramic case. The square shape, an homage to Rado’s iconic shape from the 1970s, houses a calibre 763 automatic movement and features 25 jewels and two star-shaped hands.

The watch has a titanium case back with the digital print of Thukral and Tagra’s painting. Cutting-edge robotics were used to apply the blue-to-pink gradient on the arms and create a star shape with 18-hour hands and 13-minute hands. Two SuperLuminova dots indicate the local time.

Beyond these impeccable tech specs is the actual idea. The striking watch is Thukral and Tagra and Rado’s tribute to the interconnectedness of all of humanity, allowing the wearer to imagine himself in a different time zone, besides his own, somewhere across the world.