Temporal Works Series A: Romanesque
Roman numerals are about as familiar as dial typography gets, so redrawing them takes some nerve. Lee Yuen-Rapati’s Colonnade Romans reduce I, V and X to a long vertical line and a short horizontal one, so the V’s diagonals become verticals and the X is simply two Vs mirrored.
The dial is a two-piece sandwich, with each numeral laser-cut through a silver-white opaline top layer to reveal glossy midnight blue beneath, so they look carved out rather than printed.
Price and Specs:
More details at Temporal Works.
Diatom Inner Worlds Mercury
Enhanced-colour images from NASA’s MESSENGER probe use boosted saturation to reveal Mercury’s surface minerals, and Diatom has borrowed those colours for this dial. The result is a blue base with golden highlights, on a textured dial with a scorched, barren look.
Even the rotor has a story, made from metal offcuts salvaged during the restoration of the Liberty Bell 7 capsule, the Project Mercury capsule that sank after Gus Grissom’s 1961 flight. A three-link steel bracelet changes without tools. Only 450 are being made, each numbered on the caseback. Venus, the Moon, Mars and Earth complete the collection.
Price and Specs:
More details at Diatom.
Ming x Massena LAB 57.09 Secret Honey
Secret watches are all about misdirection, and Ming’s 57.09 is a good one. Three rotating sapphire discs sit over a dark brown lacquered dial, their slots revealing and hiding honey-toned lume so the hexagonal holes seem to shift and change colour. Arrow-shaped indicators on the minute and hour discs serve as the hands.
The stepped lugs get three different finishes, from natural titanium to yellow-gold and rose-gold looks. It follows the 2021 17.09, and only 125 are being made.
Price and Specs:
More details at Ming.
Wren Vessel
Plenty of microbrands put their watches together from off-the-shelf parts, which can look great but rarely feels original. Wren has gone the harder way, designing its own case, crystal, and bracelet. The crystal is the showpiece, a faceted sapphire that arcs down to meet the case at 12 and six o’clock.
Cutting the facets only on top left the glass uneven and early prototypes appeared distorted, so Wren mirrored them underneath to even it out. Choose between a brushed sunray dial or a meteorite one, with pre-orders open and deliveries due in Q1 2027.
Price and Specs:
More details at Wren.
Emily Vega Ode to Reynisfjara
Taking cues from nature is a well-worn habit in watchmaking, and Iceland’s Reynisfjara is fair game. The black-sand beach is known for its hexagonal basalt columns, and since part of them collapsed earlier this year, this watch captures it as it was.
The dial is the draw, split like the coastline into a raised field of hexagonal basalt, a granular black-sand sector and a mosaic opal sky whose blues and greens nod to the northern lights. That blue returns on the zircon indices, 24-hour subdial, minute track and navy NATO strap.
Price and Specs:
More details at Emily Vega.
Monogriis Resta Midori 翠
The spirit of Japan runs through the Resta Midori, from its Miyota 8N40 movement to the hand assembly in Osaka. Its dominant colour is green, which carries through from the sunray dial to the lizard-embossed strap; a nod to the country’s natural landscapes, with gold-tone hands adding a little warmth.
At 36mm and 13.9mm thick thanks to the box-shaped sapphire crystal, the proportions stay properly vintage. Flip it over and a sapphire caseback shows off the movement, with around 42 hours in reserve. Water resistance is rated to 50m, and the strap closes on a butterfly deployment clasp. That’s a lot of watch for £250.
Price and Specs:
More details at Monogriis.
Kronsegler Mars Explorer Blue Red
Kronsegler likes a big idea. Its watches draw on history, science and a little philosophy, with Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and Einstein all getting a model. Space has come up before too, with an Apollo 11 watch and a Meteorit, whose dial contains a fragment of real meteorite. Mars is the obvious next stop after the Moon.
The Mars Explorer’s dial carries a Mars disc that doubles as the date display, a rotating 24-hour Earth disc and a Mars probe circling as the seconds indicator. Fitting all that in takes 46mm, so it wears big, but the sapphire crystal and a caseback window onto the movement give you plenty to look at. This blue and red version is one of five colourways, each limited to 100.
Price and Specs:
More details at Kronsegler.
Vinyler M.01 Label Edition
With more and more microbrands about, standing out is getting harder, but Vinyler’s M.01 cuts straight through the noise. Its dial is an actual discarded record, handcrafted into a watch face. The Label Edition keeps the heart of the record, with its original colours, typography and graphic details, and every dial is different.
The turntable references don’t stop there. The minute hand is inspired by a tonearm, the bezel’s dots echo the pattern on a platter, the crown nods to the weight that balances the tonearm, and through the caseback the rotor carries Vinyler’s label-style lettering. Crowdfunded on Kickstarter, the first deliveries are planned for February 2027 so the needle hasn’t dropped just yet.
Price and Specs:
More details at Vinyler.
Xeric Triptych II Automatic Wandering Hour Ice Blue
Xeric has a habit of making unusual complications accessible, and it does that again with the Triptych II. This is the second generation of its signature wandering hour display, now in a slimmer 39mm case, down from 42mm. A floating minute track reveals more of the guilloché-style dial, here in icy blue, and there’s a sweeping seconds hand too, a first for the collection.
It’s all driven by a modified Miyota 9039, known as Caliber X2.6, which you can see through the exhibition caseback. An American Horween leather strap with an upgraded deployant clasp finishes things off. Only 500 are being made, with pre-orders due to ship in January 2027.
Price and Specs:
More details at Xeric.
