Watches as Machines: The Visceral Appeal

Pplater's seminal post from 2009 delves into the philosophical essence of watches, challenging collectors to look beyond marketing hype and reconnect with the fundamental 'machine' aspect of horology. He explores what truly gives a watch visceral appeal, examining the 'strong' or 'industrial' elements that resonate deeply. This enduring discussion prompts us to consider the core purpose and intrinsic qualities that define a compelling timepiece.

The views expressed here are a public attempt to resolve a personal conundrum. By definition they are personal views; they should not offend, and the fact that they may not be shared views will not offend. It has been a personal mission for some while to try to understand what it is about various elements of various watches by various watchmakers that have such visceral appeal. Invariably, these watches (or components) are visually striking and contain one or more element that is very ‘strong’ or ‘industrial’, either by virtue of its design or the material employed in its manufacture. They vary widely: some approach the ‘Spartan’; others border on what we now call ‘steampunk’. The aim is to achieve a better understanding of self (for better or worse) by understanding the essence of what does or does not inspire personal meaning or import.  As missions go, however, it has been like trying to nail jelly to a wall.

What is a watch, after all, if it is not fundamentally a ‘machine’ created to mark accurately the passage of time?

As some definitions would have it, a ‘machine’ is an apparatus for applying mechanical power, having several inter-related parts; a device consisting of fixed and moving parts that modifies mechanical energy and transmits it in a more useful form (Oxford, freeonline). Whilst a machine may be created with superadded decoration, flourish or scale beyond that which is required to execute its purpose, it does not need to be. Rationally, a machine need only comprise the fewest number of components of the most simple  fabrication in the most appropriate materials as are necessary to acquit its raison d’etre.

In a watch world crowded and clouded by marketing push, brand development, subliminal messaging, neuro-linguistic programming, lifestyle tie-ins, intellectual property theft, pointless innovation, back catalogue plunder, third line forcing and corporate one-upmanship it is increasingly difficult to remember that these machines are intended to fulfil a function, and increasingly difficult to identify the watchmakers or brands who hold close to that ideal.

There is a nagging sense of “the Emperor’s new clothes” that is stimulated in some dark recess of the cerebral cortex as we read yet another press release replete with carefully staged photo opportunities at a ‘happening’ where beautiful - if vacuous - celebrities (whose greatest claim to horological cred is that they can almost tell the big hand from the little hand) mix with impeccably attired and impossibly fresh-faced watch company executives to spill champagne over a newly released (newly ‘realised’) watch whose six differentially-inclined tourbillons are crafted from the ebony of an extinct mammoth’s tusk and set in a case carved with the aid of a scanning electron microscope from a single pink diamond the size of a baseball retrieved from the bottom of the Marianas Trench by a team of specially trained blind albino dolphins, all in a limited edition of two pieces the price of which is magically derived by adding the gross GDP of all African nations excluding Burkina Faso, dividing by the number of dolphins in the diving team then adding applicable duty and taxes.

Get a grip! Isn’t it as simple as form following function? Even at that end of the spectrum, what was once the norm in modern watch aesthetics has been gradually shouldered aside to make way for the flood of cash-magnets: it came to be described as ‘purposeful’ then ‘sparse’, and is now (often hollowly) eulogised as ‘stealthy’. Sensing a dollar to be drained even in that niche, some of the more astute (or cynical?) aspire to the more recent inverse cachet of that ‘stealthiness’, for example by applying a coat of black paint or PVD to their otherwise ordinary watches or, at the extreme, giving us watches which are so stealthy that they don’t tell the time.

There are glimpses of sanity to be had in this stage-managed alternate reality. There are watchmakers who do – and do only – what watchmakers before them have done by eschewing the unnecessary and adhering to the elements or materials which permit the creation of an elegant (even if complicated), functional, time marking machine.

Which are the watches who declare their purpose, or whose form is defined by their purpose? Which elements of more popular pieces hark back to this pared-down, ‘industrial’ sensitivity? Which are the watches who falsely pretend to that functional aesthetic (but may still be marvels in their own right)? Where are the whiffs and echoes of tempered steel; cogs, wheels, plain engraving, flowing curves - of machines?

Here is a ‘stream of consciousness’ gallery of images that may perhaps coalesce to delineate some unified aesthetic theory:

What, if anything, is the common philosophical thread here? What is the contrary position to any of these views? Please, please, add your own thoughts or images to the dialogue. Any and every insight will be eagerly consumed.

[n.b. – photo credits are embedded in the URL for each photo: right click photo to view]

Cheers,

pplater.