The Fourth Wheel, Issue 105

The rarest and most fantastic Ressence watches ever made

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that would like to thank everyone who came along to the 100th issue celebration this week. It was a modest start to the world of live events but I think based on the response, there will be more in the future. What do you think?

Also, just to remind you: as the first Monday of the month, next week will see the first Fourth Wheel Vintage Bulletin. I’m going to give the first issue over to a few general thoughts about the world of vintage and my relationship with it, as well as setting out what you can expect from this new addition to TFW. Look out for it in your inboxes at - when else? - 10:10 UK time¹.

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

News About The Future Of The Fourth Wheel
Review: Breitling Chronomat 42 Titanium
The Latest OnlyWatch and Christie’s Woes
Revolution At Bremont
Exclusive Interview: Chronode Founder Jean-Francois Mojon

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Almost two months has passed since Watches and Wonders. My head (and my camera roll) is still full of thoughts I had while rushing from one appointment to the next, memories of things I saw that deserve revisiting, and dozens of new watches that have been almost forgotten in the very Bremont-heavy aftermath. One thing I have been waiting to write about ever since I got back is something Ressence produced, with the help of two people I’m sure many of you know well - Justin Hast and Steven Pulvirent. It’s called simply ‘Catalogue Raisonné² and it is the first of its kind that I’ve seen from a contemporary brand. Plenty of companies produce catalogues of current production, and there are some in-depth works focussed on certain watches (TAG Heuer’s latest coffee-table book includes what could be described as a catalogue raisonné of the Carrera) but few have compiled into one volume details of every single watch they have ever produced.

That’s the point of this, though, and what stood out to me immediately was the remarkable volume. Ressence has been making watches for 14 years, if you count the very first prototypes shown in 2010³, and given that I’ve been active in the watch world for that entire time, I thought I was more or less au fait with its body of work. Far from it. The catalogue reveals a side to the brand that’s far removed from the almost austere adherence to restrained colour palettes and minimal graphic design for which it’s best known. Not that Ressence has been secretly making messy, busy, unappealing watches this whole time - not at all. But the scope of its capabilities - the definition of its brand, even - is far broader than you may have ever realised.

With the help of the brand, I’ve put together a list of 16 of the most interesting, most exclusive and most surprising Ressence watches ever created. This will make the newsletter too big for your inbox… sorry about that! But I’ve saved the coolest ones til last, so it’s worth sticking with it.

Type 1 V “Genesis”

First up is this muted number from 2015. It was created to mark five years of the brand, and has a really ghostly appearance thanks to the debossed, empty typography. It’s more sombre than celebratory but it is definitely cool. The rationale behind it was to produce an ‘unfinished’ watch as the company was still in its infancy; the case still shows the milling lines and there is no lume or other infill to the numerals. If there’s a ‘beater’ Ressence, this is it.

Case: Unfinished titanium
Dial: Grey sandblasted rhodium
Number produced: 5

Type 1 Squared - X Collection

This is probably one of the better-known watches on my list, but I’ve included it as a personal preference as much as anything else. There are much rarer Type 1 Squared models, but the 10th anniversary collection, of which this was one part, was in my eyes the moment that Ressence really embraced a wider colour palette (publicly, anyway) and started getting experimental - in this instance, its the use of 48 tiny ceramic balls that offer an at-a-glance representation of where you are in the day, from dawn (yellow) to dusk (blue) and dead of night (black).

Case: Polished titanium
Dial: Khaki PVD German silver
Number produced: 40

Series 1 ref. 1005

This isn’t the very earliest Ressence design - that would be the Series 0 - but a Series 1, which preceded the Type 1 by two years. I’ve included it mostly as a representative of the earlier years, when Ressence’s watches still had crowns. This is actually the last of that era, the ref. 1005. Just the idea today of a Ressence with a crown is, ironically enough, unusual and different. In the catalogue, Benoit recalls how he had to source his anodised aluminium from Holland, as no Swiss supplier made it, and how after two aborted attempts to get his watches ‘Swiss Made’ he found a young watchmaker in his native Belgium who took a batch of components that had been rejected by a well-known Swiss independent manufacture. In his words, “Surprisingly, the very same day he informed me that the first watch was ready for inspection. Today, Sebastien is our head of watchmaking.”

Case: Polished steel
Dial: Champagne anodised aluminium
Number produced: 19

Type 1 Black Black

Oh, a black Ressence. Boring. Not so - this particular monochrome reference was never commercially produced; it pre-dates most of the ‘Black Black’ variants you might have called to mind. The difference between this and the Type 1 Black is the black DLC case. It was a one-off, made for a friend of Benoit, the company founder, and the fact that even this made it into the catalogue raisonné is why I think this is such a fun piece of publishing. The watch, it surely goes without saying, is extremely cool. Roll-neck sweater and Macbook pro not included.

Case: DLC titanium
Dial: Black DLC German silver
Number produced: 1