Harry Winston

Jack Forster
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I feel a bit the odd man out. . .

. . . both here and elsewhere as for reasons which I understand intellectually but which don't resonate for me emotionally so many seem to be initially horrified at Opus 8!  I'm not sure what about it has drawn so much fire.  A slide operated mechano-digital watch seems like a pretty cool piece of kit to me, and as I remarked to Dr. Cheong by email it's not as if the appropriation of pop culture forms for high craft/art purposes is exactly unheard of; it happens in fashion (constantly) it's been a mainstay of the work of artists from Duchamp to Jeff Koons to Robert Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Warhol, et cetera ad nauseam.  As a strategy in the abstract, in fact, it's so deeply interwoven into the fabric of the evolution of design forms as to be a commonplace, so I don't have it in me to dislike the watch on the basis of its general strategy of formal appropriation.

As a mechanical complication I find it pretty fascinating- it takes nothing away from the De Grisogono to say that it's a completely fresh and unique way of implementing a digital time display.  The DG has its charms as well but it, too, quotes electronic time displays in its design, at least to my eye, albeit it's Nixie tube displays rather than LED/LCD displays.

From a critical standpoint, this is a watch which to me seems to be a lot about the user's interaction with it as well; I was lucky enough recently to have an experience of a pretty rare, pretty expensive, pretty powerful supercar about which I'd read a great deal but which I'd never been inside, and the huge disparity between what you imagine something is like to experience and what it's like to actually experience it can be pretty vast.  We judge our first impressions of all these Basel novelties on the basis of our (in many cases, such as yours and Dr. Cheong's admittedly very extensive) experience of other high end product, but nobody's ever done a piece like this before and I think the combination of visual animation and tactile involvement might well be experientially appealing in a way that initial product shots simply can't convey.  In fact, I'd bet you a beer on it (which is a safe bet because I'm on the other side of the planet from you although hey, if you get a chance to try the watch out and you still hate it, then I lose the bet and you can fax me your bar tab.  Ah, on second thought, based on your WFED postings, maybe not your bar tab.  I don't feel like explaining to the Missus why I'm covering two bottles of Batard Montrachet at some insider's secret temple of haute cuisine in Singapore ;-) ).

Is it an Opus to stand with the best of the Opus watches?  Frankly, the Opus series are a mixed bag in terms of their appeal to any one individual- from One through Seven there have been some that appealed to me enormously, some that left me cold, some that I thought were frankly misconceived, and I would have been very surprised to find Opus 8 a watch possessing universal appeal as well.  I find the design derivative in a good way, the implementation of the time display fresh and interesting, and the elevation of its historical points of reference fascinating; I think it's a clever piece.

Just first impressions, like most people's based on pictures, not on the actual watch, but I think it mightn't be a bad idea to at least have the thing in hand and see how it feels to play with it before going postal on the poor thing ;-) .

JIMVHO, of course,

Jack