If you’ve been around WWR for any length of time, you’re no doubt familiar with H. Moser and their sublime dials. While the focus is often on their use of fumé processes; as of late they’ve been working with Vantablack more and more. For this release, they partnered up with The Armoury, and came up with quite an interesting watch – the H. Moser x The Armoury Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse.
For those not familiar with The Armoury, they’re a menswear brand that started in Hong Kong in 2010, focusing on classic style, selling their own designs, as well as products sourced from around the globe. This watch, then would be a mix of the two. The design story behind the watch is interesting – for it, Mark Cho and Eliot Hammer wanted to recreate the sense of a solar eclipse on the dial.
Vantablack is the perfect canvas for such a look, given that it absorbs so much light. Around the edge of the dial, the inner bezel is in polished steel or red gold, giving the effect of the corona being visible around the edges of the moon. Spinning over the top of that inky darkness, you’ve got the polished handset finished in the same metal as the inner bezel.
While solar eclipses are large affairs, the H. Moser x The Armoury Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse is most definitely not. It’s coming in at a restrained 38mm (and under 10mm thick), snugly housing the HMC 327 manually-wound movement which is visible through the caseback.
While I’m more of a silver-tone fan, I think the version done in red gold really highlights the solar eclipse effect that was gone for with this design. If you’re the type to like subtle and elegant designs, and appreciate the craft that goes into small-batch efforts (be it watches, menswear, or anything else) then this is likely a watch you want to be aware of. Only 28 of each version are being made, making it a rarer beast. The price of $25,900 is a lofty one, to be sure, but can you put a price on having an eclipse on your wrist?
Available via H. Moser & Cie or The Armoury.
Tech Specs from H. Moser
- References
- Reference 1327-1200, steel model, Vantablack® dial, black calf leather, limited edition of 28 pieces
- Reference 1327-1201, steel and red gold model, Vantablack® dial, black calf leather, limited edition of 28 pieces
- Case
- Steel or steel with 5N red gold inner bezel
- Diameter: 38.0 mm
- Height: 9.9 mm
- Sapphire crystal
- See-through case back with sapphire crystal
- Crown adorned with an “M”
- Dial
- Vantablack® with 12 indices
- Breguet-shaped hour and minute hands in steel or in 5N red gold
- Small seconds hand in steel or in 5N red gold
- Movement
- Hand-wound HMC 327 Manufacture calibre
- Diameter: 32.0 mm or 14 ¼ lignes/height: 4.5 mm
- Frequency: 18,000 Vib/h
- 29 jewels
- Power reserve: minimum of 3 days
- Hacking seconds
- Moser teeth for all wheels and pinions
- Movement and components hand-finished and decorated
- Moser balance wheel and original Straumann® Hairspring
- Functions
- Hours and minutes
- Small seconds at 6 o’clock
- Power reserve indication at the back
- Strap
- Hand-stitched black calf leather, two-tone effect with two different textures Steel pin buckle, engraved with the Moser logo
