The Fourth Wheel, Issue 102

Exclusive interview with Chronode founder Jean-Francois Mojon, plus: bad taste and the Met Gala, and why Sylvester Stallone is the Donald Trump of watch collecting

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that spoke to a genuine watchmaking legend this week - and a very nice man to boot. I haven’t done many interviews here, but will try and do more now, at least when the right people crop up. And Mojon is definitely that.

Also, some housekeeping: having promised a sale for the month of May, I fluffed the admin and didn’t actually switch on the discount until earlier this week. Apologies. But you can now sign up for The Fourth Wheel monthly or annually with a 25 per cent discount. Spread the word!

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The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

News About The Future Of The Fourth Wheel
Review: Baltic Hermetique Tourer
Revolution At Bremont
Roger Smith on British Watchmaking
Where Are All The Risk-Takers?

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It has been a bad week for good taste, hasn’t it? First we have Tom Brady’s custom Audemars Piguet, with his name in diamond hour markers, which was well described on Instagram as ‘the most Florida thing that ever happened’.

Then this, which I swear I thought had to be a joke, from Jacob & Co. The fact that one will be auctioned for charity does not give me any pause in describing it as a dreadful thing.

jacobandco

A post shared by @jacobandco

And then there was the Met Gala. If celebrities want to play a giant game of ‘who can look the weirdest’ I have no problem with that, and some of the outfits created are actually rather phenomenal in their detail and construction. Of course, the whole thing feels like the bit in the Hunger Games where the rich overlords indulge to excess, oblivious to the rebellion brewing outside, but I’m not about to start tearing the whole thing apart. It’s beyond parody anyway. My takeaway was this: for all that commentators like myself have talked about the watch industry aligning itself more closely with the fashion world in recent years, if you want an illustration of how awkward the gap between the two still is, the Met Gala is it. This is couture at its silliest, with absurd, unique creations that are guaranteed to turn heads, and all that watch brands can do is loan an actor something relatively ordinary and hope they put it on the right way up. (No guarantee).

If watch brands are going to be in this space, then be in this space. Commit to the bit, as they say in showbiz¹. If you’re going to go full fashion, then we need to see insane creations to match the suits and dresses. Funnily enough, one day previously and some 1200 miles further south, we’d seen Tudor casually drop a pair of unique Black Bay dials for Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Riccardo, so I’m calling it now: the ‘event one-off’ is the next chapter in brand ambassador marketing. For the most part, the horological and fashion elements were hopelessly mismatched at the Met. Only a couple of stars wore watches that seemed well chosen for their outfits or that they looked comfortable wearing. (Please, god, can someone stage an intervention for Barry Keoghan?)

Miami Grand Prix or Met Gala? Soon there could be more in common than initials

Brand-wise, it would make more sense if the more avant-garde thinkers in the watch world were involved, but the majority of them don’t have the money or the inclination. So, against all the odds, this is me calling for more over-the-top fashion nonsense, not less. And hey, maybe you could take all the one-off watches, created to interpret a particular aesthetic theme, and auction them all off for charity afterwards? Nah, it’ll never catch on².

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Ariel Adams, founder of A Blog To Watch, penned a lengthy opinion piece for WatchPro this week, entitled Why Professional Watch Media Is In Trouble And Why You Should Care. I’d have included it in recommended reading below, but as it’s one of my pet subjects, I wanted to say more in response.

Ariel’s basic point is that mainstream watch brands don’t understand or appreciate the value of the media, viewing it with a combination of suspicion and disdain. Hard relate, as the kids say. Of course, this is a column written by a media owner, and AA doesn’t miss a single opportunity to blow his own trumpet. So there is a teeny bit of bias at work. But he is spot on when he says that brands’ own content will never be able to supplant independent media, and equally on the money when he laments the supine stance of most media outlets’ business models (i.e. pivot to retail, become compromised, monetise your readers’ loyalty by selling them limited editions). I’ve written extensively about why this has felt like the only option for media owners - but good for Ariel for finding another way. One aspect of the whole problem that he overlooked is the question of paid content, and as the publisher of a Substack, I felt that was a bit of a miss (my bias creeping in, of course). What better way to free yourself from dependence on advertising and marketing budgets than by basing your revenue stream elsewhere, i.e. the people who actually consume your content? Perhaps fairly, as no major media outlet functions this way, Ariel doesn’t really go there, but I’m surprised it didn’t get a look-in.

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Enough of that, now to the main event. Earlier this week I had the chance to sit down with a truly significant figure from the last 20 years of watchmaking, Chronode founder Jean-Francois Mojon.

With a wealth of horological talents under one roof, Chronode is a 35-person strong design studio, R&D lab, production atelier and service centre that has worked on some of the most interesting and accomplished watches of recent times. Many have won GPHG awards, and alongside firms like APRP, Concepto, Agenhor, Vaucher et al, Chronode belongs to a small but extremely influential club of companies that are quietly responsible for an enormous amount of the real watchmaking that we all love.

Mojon’s early calling-card was his work on the Harry Winston Opus X, but you should also know him for creating calibres for MB&F’s Legacy Machines, Czapek’s Antarctique Rattrapante chronograph, Hermes’ Arceau L’Heure de la Lune, most of HYT’s movements, the Christopher Ward Bel Canto and many more. We spoke about his history, the brands he most admires, the process of being a constant innovator, and the current state of independent watchmaking.

Check out the signature on the LM1 from MB&F - a rare occasion when Mojon’s name is seen on a watch

TFW: Tell us briefly where it all began

Jean-Francois Mojon: I started Chronode in 2005 after ten years at IWC. I had a couple of ideas for new concepts that I presented to them and they said it’s great but it;s not for us. They had their lines, their history, you know. That was the first time I thought why not start my own company and propose these concepts to others. It started alone, for one year, and after that came others, other customers 

TFW: Did it feel like a big risk?

J-F M: Not so big, because I said ok, if after one or two years it doesn’t work I will find something else. I knew I could go back to the same kind of work. But it’s always better to try than not to take the risk. That time, 2005-08, was kind of easy - maybe not easy, exactly, but everything was very open. Brands were looking for novelties without big histories behind them, and they would say ok, let’s try. They wanted new things, crazy things, and it was a really nice period to start. After 2008-9 it was a bit different. 

TFW: What was your first commission, and how did things grow from there?

J-F M: My first customer was Urban Jurgensen. I had contact with the owner, Mr Bamberger at the time, and he said why not try to make a detent escapement. It started like that, and then other customers came - Harry Winston, the Opus X came a bit later but it wasn;t the first project, we did a moonphase. There was also De Grisogono, you know, we did their all-digital display, fully mechanical, that was a big challenge. There were a lot of really crazy watches at that time.