Obviously, the phrase “looking through time” has some more metaphysical connotations, more often than not. Today, we’ll see that a watch brand out of France has made this a more concrete concept.
It seems no matter what the medium, be it watches or wheels, when we’re used to seeing a circle with a lot of support (or other structures) in the center, we love to see the absence of those structures. To that end, the folks over at Quinting have come up with a watch that shows a see-through dial – with no movement obvious underneath.
The question, of course, is how their doing this. They answer the question some on their Movement page (here), and it seems to consist of layers of sapphire discs that are driven. What I cannot discern, for certain, is if the true time-keeping bits of the movement are housed under a reflective layer at the bottom of the stack, or around the outer edge of the case. Regardless of the housing, it’s still a pretty visually-interesting effect.
Of course, given the nature of those movements (and the fact that they’re limited edition), Quinting has also created some versions that rely on steel discs (rather than sapphire) to help keep costs down. Even with this change, however, they’ve included some rather interesting dial designs, some of which I’ve shown you here in the post.
Regardless of the particular lineup you drill into, there are two constants – unique, limited-edition designs, and the fact that these are truly high end luxury pieces – the “entry level” models start at around $7,000, and go all the to just shy of $60,000. Definitely out of reach for many of us, but it is still an interesting exercise (at least for me) to see what can be done in terms of design and engineering when the budget isn’t a limitation for the watch maker.
