James Gurney has written on watches for over 25 years, founding QP Magazine in 2003, the UK’s first home-grown watch title. In 2009, he initiated SalonQP, one of the first watch fairs to focus on the end-consumer, and is regarded as a leading horological voice contributing to news and magazine titles across the globe.
Outside a handful of boutique-scale independent makers, contemporary watch design tends to play it safe, at least in comparison to the burst of creativity the industry witnessed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The watch sold well enough for Le Marquand to be commissioned for a second design, the boxy, asymmetric Spaceman Audacieuse. Both models and a later LCD digital design were also sold under other brand names, such as Fortis, just the thing to wear while glancing at your JVC Videosphere.Given his genius at accessory design and obsession with the future, not to mention the space suits he designed for Nasa, it is no surprise that Pierre Cardin designed a number of space watches.
Cardin wasn’t the only designer to fuse novel materials with decidedly non-standard case and dial designs, and the mid-1970’s saw a slew of off-beat watches born of the same sci-fi-inflected futurism. Typical is Jovial’s Vision 2000, which was conceived in a similar vein to the Spaceman, though the helmet is more abstracted and the display more conventionally legible.
Ironically, these watches were the last generation to use mechanical movements before quartz technology and digital displays took over. Makers quickly adopted a more conventional approach to design as they sought to reassure potential consumers of the new technology, but not before jewellery designer Andrew Grima produced a series of one-off watches using Hamilton Pulsar movements that are the last word in sci-fi futurism.
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox‘Willie Christie: a very distinctive style: Then & Now’ by ACC Art Books looks back on the glamour of the 1970sThe Brazilian house in Minas Gerais by Tetro Arquitetura is designed to elevate and simplify the art of one-level livingCineteca Milano Arlecchino displays 1940s Fornasetti designs originally created for the cinema’s foyer © Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The...
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