This Wild Watch Uses Liquid to Tell the Time
Hydromechanical horology, reduced to its essentials.
Originally published by Jack Forster on Hodinkee.
There are two distinct philosophies when it comes to the design of highly complicated watches. The first is for the watch to revel in its own complexity – you show off as much of the mechanism as possible, or at the very least, you get as much information as possible displayed on the dial. The other approach is to create something that wears its complexity lightly, and makes it subordinate to a unified aesthetic statement. In the first instance, we have watches like the Reverso Tribute Gyrotourbillon and the Ulysse Nardin Trilogy of Time watches. In the second, we have things like the Ochs und Junior perpetual calendar, and the Rotonde de Cartier Astromysterieux (and, in fact, pretty much every Cartier mystery clock ever made).