Despite their vastly different uses, watches and guns have a fair amount in common. Well, as long as you take ‘guns’ to mean the beautiful hunting instruments of the British gentry at any rate. If you’ve ever been to a workshop for either, you’ll know what I mean: each part built by hand, benches heavy with specialised tools, you get the picture.
Watchmakers have also been getting their hands on expert gun engravers to give their watches an aesthetic edge in recent years, with pretty interesting results. The Struthers Kullberg Edition, however, takes that relationship a little further. The result is considerably more than just interesting.
Struthers cut their teeth on restoration and more recently set about taking the opportunity to do something new with their accumulated expertise using watches saved from scrappage for bullion. In the case of the Kullberg, that came when they were asked to match a watch to a pair of vintage Beretta shotguns.
It was a slow process; not only did they need to come up with a design worthy of the guns’ stunning engravings, but Struthers needed to find both a gun engraver to do it and a movement to fit inside. For the former they found a veteran of Purdey and Holland & Holland; for the latter, a salvaged English movement with free-sprung balance, fusee and power reserve from Swedish, London-based watchmaker Victor Kullberg.
From there it was a matter of creating the watch of a gun collector’s dreams. Pretty simple really. In keeping with the Berettas, the centre of the dial is engraved with a traditional acanthus scroll motif, as is the movement. It’s nothing like the normal guilloche that Swiss watchmakers are so fond of; it’s deeper and far, far more domineering. It also makes the watch perfectly suited to country estates and copious amounts of tweed.
Struthers London Kullberg Edition Display Box
If there’s one thing the watch is not suited to, it’s smaller wrists. At 50mm this is a big watch by any standards, certainly the largest that Struthers has ever made. Add in the oversized left-handed crown – a necessity for the owner – and the Kullberg is impossible to miss. At that size, it’ll never look entirely vintage, even with its case shape and movement shouting otherwise.
It takes a lot to match a pair of vintage Berettas; they’re big, they’re beautiful and they’re something wonderfully archaic. Fortunately, so is the Struthers Kullberg Edition; struthers-london.co.uk
