This watch was carved from a meteorite that hit Earth a million years ago
CTV
A new watch from design duo Toledano & Chan has been carved from a meteorite that slammed into Earth around one million years ago.
In watchmaking, heritage matters. But while rival European horologists vaunt the traditions of their centuries-old workshops, design duo Toledano & Chan’s new creation has a longer history altogether: It was carved from a meteorite that slammed into Earth around one million years ago.
The Brutalist-inspired watch, dubbed the B/1M, was made from part of the Muonionalusta meteorite, the remains of which were first discovered in the Swedish village of Kitkiöjärvi in 1906. Since then, dozens more fragments — scattered around by the force of its collision with Earth — have been found across northern Scandinavia.
While small amounts of the meteorite have been used on luxury timepieces before, artist Phillip Toledano and watchmaker Alfred Chan wanted to go one step further.
“You often see meteorite dials; they are not uncommon on watches,” Toledano told CNN via Zoom from New York, where he is based. “But an entire meteorite case, dial, lugs — all that stuff — is very unusual.”
The reason may be, at least partly, price. Toledano declined to disclose how much the fragment used for the B/1M cost, but he noted that raw meteorite can sell for more, per gram, than gold. The prototype watch is estimated to fetch between US$8,000 and $16,000 when it appears at the Time for Art auction, organized by Phillips Watches, in New York on Saturday.
“There are no meteorite trees, so it’s deeply expensive to work with,” Toledano said. “And the annoying thing… is that while when you work with gold, if you have bits and pieces left over, you can recycle them for other projects, but with meteorite you can’t.”
Muonionalusta meteorite is made primarily from iron, meaning the duo had to protect their watch with an anti-rust coating. But the material also holds a unique aesthetic quality: distinctive multidirectional striations, known as Widmanstätten patterns, that give it an “otherworldly” appearance that “glitters slightly,” Toledano said.
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A new watch from design duo Toledano & Chan has been carved from a meteorite that slammed into Earth around one million years ago.
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