These hyper-designed, limited-edition watches may cheer you up during these dark times

The global luxury industry is limping back to some sort of normalcy, much of it ephemeral at the moment, without any roadmap about when the pandemic will end.

The watch industry has begun launching new timepieces or pushing the ones they had launched earlier this year. The sales are, right now, online and most watch brands have augmented their digital presence as there are no signs of people returning to the stores. In India, the hope is to leverage the festival and wedding seasons that will begin in September, however, truncated they may be.

Récital 26 Brainstorm Chapter Two, Bovet

The luxury brand is selective about what it puts out, which is why it launches only 800 timepieces across all its collections every year.

This one is the second edition of the super successful Récital 26 Brainstorm Chapter One. Under Récital 26 Brainstorm Chapter Two’s asymmetric sapphire crystal case and the sloping bezel is a double-sided tourbillon, a second-time zone with a 24-hour city disc, a precision moon phase and a 5-day long power reserve.

The watch’s complex architecture combines decorative arts, chronometry and mechanical ingenuity. The brand headed by its owner Pascal Raffy, a passionate watch collector, handcrafts all the components, including the calibre or movement, in Bovet's Swiss workshops using artisanal processes.

The sloped bezel offers a clear view of the mechanisms such as the rotating domes and three-dimensional needles. The watchmakers’ have had a tough time working with sapphire, the second hardest material known after diamond. The hardness of the material doesn’t make machining and polishing easy.

To optimise transparency and ergonomics, the watchmakers have fixed the movement at the bottom rather than inside the middle, as is usually the case. The luminescent moon phase indicator is positioned at 9 o'clock and indicated by a rotating dome. A total of only 60 movements will be produced for the Brainstorm Chapter Two and they will be distributed among the 47.8mm-diameter sapphire case, limited to editions of 10 timepieces each, in blue quartz, green quartz and blue aventurine glass dial.

Calatrava, Patek Philippe

Calatrava, Patek Philippe’s offering for 2020 features a 40mm steel case, a grey-blue textured dial and a self-winding calibre 324 movement. It’s also the brand’s first watch to appear on the open market this year after it announced its departure from the Baselworld fair and deferred any announcements.

The cambered polished steel bezel is a rarity in its collections. But the piece de resistance is the carbon-style textured dial.

On the reverse is a sapphire-crystal case back and the “New Manufacture 2019” inscription. The watch is dedicated to the brand’s recently opened watchmaking facility. Patek Philippe is offering the new Calatrava in a limited-edition series of 1,000 pieces, each costing £21,710.

[Re]master01 Selfwinding Chronograph, Audemars Piguet 

The Swiss horology brand has reached far back into its past for a watch that feels akin to listening to a remastered recording of your favourite retro number.

Audemars Piguet’s vintage chronograph wristwatches are among the rarest in the world, with only 307 units made between the 1930s through the 1950s. [Re]master01 Selfwinding Chronograph reinterprets one of these rare chronograph wristwatches with contemporary horological technology.

This limited edition of 500 pieces is available in two-tone steel and pink gold case, enhanced with a champagne dial. [Re]master01 features a round case and lugs in stainless steel, enhanced by a thin bezel that provides an unobstructed view on the dial’s detailed work, topped by a crown in 18-carat pink gold.

The case’s two-tone polished aesthetics are complemented by a satin-brushed gold-toned dial, enriched with black transferred hour-markers, pink gold hour, minute and seconds’ hands, blue chronograph hands, and a blue transferred tachymetric scale.

“There were many inspiring watches within our heritage collection that could have been the basis for this remastering project. The entire team unanimously decided on this chronograph wristwatch because of the specific aesthetic and emotional connections we all felt for this echo of the past,” says Michael Friedman, the brand’s Head of Complications.

Happy Sport, Chopard

The 2020 version of this sport-chic timepiece is an ode to Caroline Scheufele, artistic director and co-president of Chopard, the woman responsible for the Happy Sport series, a striking blend of utilitarian stainless steel and glamorous diamonds. Why call it Happy Sport? Because of the prima ballerinas that freely swirl between two sapphire crystals.

This year, the “dancing diamonds” timepiece is encased in ethically sourced white and rose gold and features seven prong-set diamonds moving about in the dial. The textured mother-of-pearl dial has a guilloche centre (an intricate decorative technique with repetitive pattern) as a backdrop to the diamond hour markers and Roman numerals. The movement is indigenous Chopard 96.17 automatic and the watch has a power reserve of 65 hours.

Master Grande Tradition Gyrotourbillon Westminster Perpétuel, JLC 

Jaeger-LeCoultre's history is intimately tied to unspoiled surroundings in Vallée de Joux, in Switzerland, where its workshop is based and where the sounds of nature dominate all else. Among all the other sounds are some that are signatures of the valley. For instance, that of the spruce forests, which, due to the extreme cold, produces a wood that has exceptional resonance quality. It has led the watchmakers, forced to stay indoors for several winter months, to produce beautiful chiming watches.

JLC has often paid tribute to these sounds with their minute repeater and the Memovox alarm with their minute repeater and the Memovox alarm and in a series called The Sound Maker.

For the 2020 timepiece, Master Grande Tradition Gyrotourbillon Westminster Perpétuel, the brand has taken inspiration from the first Memovox watches of the 1950s, bestowing on it a contemporary twist. The watch has a calibre 184 and an orbital flying tourbillon.

The ingenuity here lies not just in the alarm that delightfully sounds like those spruce forests, but also in the significant smaller tourbillon. Reducing the size of a mechanism also reduces its error tolerance, which is why successful miniaturisation efforts are complex and highly valued. Going back to the alarm, then; to create a chime of unmatched euphony, the watch has a silence-reduction function built into its chiming mechanism. This ensures the hour strikes, quarter strikes and minute strikes are seamlessly joined so what you hear is a beautiful sound.

Luminor Marina, Panerai

In 2020, Panerai marks the 70th anniversary of its tritium-based luminescent material, Luminor, with a watch dedicated to the name. The new Luminors feature distinct luminescent applications and case materials never before seen in watchmaking.

Each of the new Luminors is housed within a 44mm case and features the brand’s signature protective crown bridge; each sports the bold Arabic numerals of Luminors past.

Among them is the Luminor Marina DMLS, a luminescent blend of sunrayed blue-green. The case material is sandblasted DMLS titanium. DMLS is a 3D printing process in which titanium is compacted together just below the melting point, to form a solid whole using a fibre optic laser.

The Luminor Marina DMLS is finished with a Carbotech bezel, crown and lever, and its numerals and indices finished in grey Super-LumiNova for tone-on-tone consistency. The Luminor Marina Panerai Goldtech, on the other hand, is cased in the brand’s red gold alloy with 24% copper and 0.4% platinum. One of the most luxurious watches from the brand, it has satiné soleil (satin-like) dial decoration and a 5 bar water resistance.

Raider Harpoon, Favre Leuba

The brand has launched its dive watch, the Raider Harpoon in a 42mm size, a size small enough to be considered rare. Favre-Leuba’s technology engineer Urs Gottscheu has this to say, “When we decided to launch the Raider Harpoon in a smaller 42mm size, we had to think how to create the new timepiece without changing the design and the proportions of the original. Most importantly, we didn’t want to compromise on the readability. To avoid having a much thicker watch, we reduced the water-resistance parameter from 500m to 300m. The proportions stayed the same and we still have a very impressive diving functionality.”

The watch is encased in a stainless steel case with gunmetal PVD coating and features a unidirectional rotating bezel made of anodized aluminium with the 20-minute scale that serves as an assistant to a safe dive. It reminds the diver of the remaining time before decompression is needed. The blue or black dial has appliqued and luminous index marks and a luminous hour indicator.

Veena-inspired watch, Jaipur Watch Company

JWC’s new watch defines the best of Indian craftsmanship. The limited-edition watches for men and women have motifs derived from an old veena that are engraved on the case and the dial. Engraving is an ancient Indian art, perfected for centuries on furniture, marble, wood, and even in some cases marble floors and such.

The stunning watch’s hands are also designed the shape of the Veena. The watches have a gold case and a Swiss 503 Ronda movement. The women’s version is studded with black and white diamonds.

Ressence Type 1 Slim X, Ressence

From Belgium comes this avant-garde brand founded in 2010 by Benoît Mintiens. The brand is best known for its distinctive rotating disk designs. However, for its limited-edition release this year, Ressence Type 1 Slim X, it has broken from that decade-long tradition of pebble-like rounded form.

The case shape is a classic ‘70s style, with steeply sloping sides and a mirror-polished finish that highlights titanium’s dark lustre. The watch, of course, features the characteristic domed sapphire crystal.

Ressence Type 1 Slim X, Ressence has a deep olive green tone on top of the German silver surface. Half of the main minute's dial and half of the rotating hours subdial are matte-finished. This means there is a constantly changing alignment between the two halves that looks striking on Ressence’s rotating dial.

To celebrate the brand’s 10th anniversary, Ressence has replaced the 10 o’clock Arabic numeral on the hour’s subdial with a marker meant to combine a Roman numeral with a stylized hourglass.

The watch is powered by ETA-based ROCS 1 automatic movement. The brand is famous for its patented Ressence Orbital Convex System (ROCS), composed of 107 parts, with the display made up of orbital discs. The entire dial rotates on itself, with each sub-dial making smaller revolutions.

This beautiful brand is among the few independent, smaller luxury watch brands, backed by great design and interesting innovations in dials and other components that are available in India.

Deepali Nandwani is a journalist who keeps a close watch on the world of luxury.