The Fourth Wheel, Issue 104

Breitling's titanium Chronomat reviewed, and is the mirror watch the trend no-one saw coming?

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that is excited to be hosting its first live event next week. In case you missed it last Issue, on Tuesday 28th I am having a little get-together to raise a glass to this little newsletter reaching triple digits. I’ve teamed up with the Watch Collector’s Club, whose founder Hamish will be talking to me about why the hell I have decided to make a career out of writing about watches. I’d love to see as many of you there as possible; if you’ve not got terrible Bank Holiday hangovers, come along! It’ll be in central London, from 6.30pm. RSVP at the link for the full details.

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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
The Latest OnlyWatch and Christie’s Woes
Revolution At Bremont
Exclusive Interview: Chronode Founder Jean-Francois Mojon
Where Are All The Risk-Takers?

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Mirror, mirror, on my wrist…

I don’t normally ‘do’ new watch coverage. As a rule, as I figure you all have that need attended to by literally every other watch site. But rules are there to be broken from time to time, and this week when Jose at Isotope Watches sent out the press release for his latest project, it piqued my interest.

The watch is called the Mercury. It’s a limited edition produced in partnership with Revolution and it is notable for having a completely mirror-polished appearance, central to which is the world’s first convex mirror-polished dial. It’s quite a thing in my own right - but it also sent a chain reaction pinging through my brain and, at glacial pace, I eventually thought… are mirror watches a recognisable trend now? Is this… a thing? They seem to be a thing for Wei Koh in particular, because only a couple of months ago he announced a limited edition mirror watch with Sartory Billard - the Grail Watch 11 SB07 “Ghost”. This, also, is quite a thing - at least in pictures.

The Isotope x Revolution Mercury

I guess what it is for me is that while plenty of watches are impractical - hundreds and hundreds more or less take impracticality as their founding principle - taking a watch and raising its all-over finish to a mirror shine that won’t be the same the minute you touch it, let alone wear it in ordinary life, seems like a special type of perverse, deliberate impracticality¹. Then I started thinking back to the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Sejima edition from 2022; Zenith’s Defy Extreme Mirror from the start of this year and reflecting - ha! - that maybe, just maybe, this is the trend no-one saw coming. When I was at Mr Porter we worked with MAD Paris on some customised AP Royal Oak 37mm models which also had a glossy, liquid metal sort of appearance, and double-checking to see if they still existed, found this punky number. Definitely a trend. Google has also told me of the D1 Milano Ultra Thin Mirror, which is very much the Primark to AP’s Prada, and the Movado Museum Sapphire. I’ve actually had a soft spot for the Movado Museum for ages - the modern ones feel pretty cheap and unsatisfying, but an original would be a very cool thing to own.

Anyway, that’s a tangent - I’m sure readers will tell me about mirror watches I’ve missed. I thought I’d ask Jose a bit more about the Mercury. This is what he had to say.

TFW: What inspired you to make this? It’s very different from Isotope’s other designs.

Jose Miranda: The need to have a sporty, classic watch in our collection, but with a twist, was a driving force. I don’t like boring watches or those merely "inspired by" others. I deeply believe in slow design and using existing designs to avoid redundancy. It's not that I dislike other watches—quite the contrary—but I believe there are plenty of new ways to create unique, unseen design solutions. The only barrier is budget constraints; otherwise, we would be making watches as original and complex as Urwerk or MB&F.

For the Mercury, the inspiration was our lacrima logo, symbolizing a droplet. It wouldn’t make sense to have a water connection since it’s not a diver watch. One of our first watches was the Goutte d’Eau (and soon there will be a Goutte d’Eau 2.0). I had an old mercury thermometer that I broke and started playing with, ensuring we handled it safely, just like when I was a kid. Mercury has a peculiar behaviour—its droplets keep their round shape, with only a small surface touching the base. For accuracy, this behaviour is reflected in the droplets on the dial.

We were able to cut a droplet in half, and from there we moved to 3D renders. Expanding the two halves revealed the case and the lugs, but it looked too much like the Panerai cushion case. So, we sought fluid shapes, which led me to recall Dreyfuss’s designs. We started exploring fluid shapes, the decoration in the smoking room, the wheel shapes… it’s art in motion, and even when static, it looks like it’s moving. That’s the idea of the case: to be different, but within measurements that can be worn daily—fluid, slim, discreet, and for connoisseurs only.

TFW: What about the dial? That sounds like a headache

JM: We tested numerous green, black, and salmon dials, and one day, I had a video meeting with Wei Koh from Revolution. I showed him the renders, and he suggested releasing it with a mirror dial, which I loved. I agreed, unaware that no one had done a convex mirror dial before.

I consulted many suppliers, including some of the best in Switzerland, and was initially told it couldn’t be done. Six months and many trials later, we succeeded. In the end, the polished case, hands, convex case, hands, crystal sapphire… everything made sense, and the cherry on top was the mirror-polished dial.

TFW: Are there other mirror watches that you had in the back of your mind when you designed it? I loved the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Sejima; there's also something of Georg Jensen about the idea, perhaps? 

JM: I spend months studying and discovering previous watches before we start working on our designs. The goal is to avoid similarities, inspiration cues, and existing solutions. Georg Jensen pioneered polishing and perfectly finishing his traditional pieces, making mirror polish one of his signatures. While his work is interesting, it wasn’t an inspiration per se for our designs.

Regarding the Octo, we are currently working on our integrated watch. It’s taking years to find a shape and solutions that haven’t been used before. We are almost there, but not quite yet.

TFW: Do you look forward to seeing these get worn and scratched and beaten - which will provide quite a contrast with the dial - or does a part of you really wince inside at the thought of these getting roughed up, given how much work has gone into the look?

JM: Our watches are like my cars: no garage queens. They are all made to be worn, which is why the Mercury has a waterproof rating of 100m and sapphire crystal. If scratched or dented, they can be recovered, but I prefer them used, with a soul of their own. Used watches have stories to tell, and it means they are loved, cherished companions. Even if they get too beaten, as long as they are clean, they will always be cool watches.

TFW: How much of a nightmare was it to photograph?

JM: Mirror-polished surfaces are indeed a nightmare to photograph. I was an Executive Producer for most of my life, spending months filming and producing product photography. I worked with directors and DOPs like Max Modray (Apple) and Robert Dowling (Pink Floyd). It was an honor to have our first watch, the Jumping Hour Rider, photographed by Robert Dowling. We spent an afternoon in Soho taking pictures, using black velvet, carton, and fabric between the lenses and lights to create an ethereal atmosphere. His pictures do not use Photoshop and look flawless.

Almost ten years later, most of our pictures are taken by Brad Homes, and the Mercury is no exception. He also used black elements to hide the camera and surroundings. It’s a complex approach, but all the watches you see in our posts or adverts are the real thing, not immaculate renders. At the moment, we only use renders to prove a concept or to show ideas.

TFW: Do you insist everyone handles it with gloves? I hope it comes with a free polishing kit...

JM: On the contrary, we took it to the Windup Watch Fair in San Francisco, and it was handled by everyone who visited our booth, without gloves. Some people even had metal wristbands on the same wrist. It hurts a bit since it’s the #000, but that’s the only way to make it interesting to everyone. The package includes a cleaning cloth—it doesn’t polish, but it helps keep the watch shiny and tidy.

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Review: Breitling Chronomat 42 Titanium

You know what I lie awake at night thinking? Why are there so few chronographs available between, say, £7,000 and £12,000? If I love cars, or planes, or rockets, or anything else that goes fast and makes a lot of noise (for indeed I am, at heart, an eight-year old boy), why are there no watches that speak to these things? Will no-one ever combine an automatic chronograph, a sturdy case and bracelet, and the loose sense of association with adrenaline-heavy activities into one handsome watch? 

I’m kidding of course - I don’t lie awake at night. I sleep the heavy slumber of a tired parent. It also turns out that what do you know, there are just a few chronographs in this market category, and what I’ve really been thinking about is where the Breitling Chronomat fits in. Why this watch? I’m not going to pretend it fits a long-held strategy or thesis that I’ve been developing, but it dropped into my inbox just before Watches and Wonders and I immediately thought it would be fun to spend some time with a watch that will likely be overshadowed by everything that was about to be released in Geneva. Also, it looked nice.

The UK team was kind enough to send me the new Chronomat Titanium 42mm for a few days and in the metal, it still looked nice. That’s the kind of cutting edge critical appraisal you’re paying for - but joking aside, there are a lot of watches that don’t live up to the renders. This is not one².

For all that this watch has a history to interrogate, a design approach to scrutinise, a subjective ‘wearing experience’ to try and articulate, one thing has become clearer the more I have thought about it: reviewing this watch is almost entirely about titanium as a material choice and specifically, about how much you should value that choice. 

But first, let’s do all those other things, because they will also be useful in leading us to what I think is the fundamental dichotomy present in this watch.