“I simply love the Freak One. It’s simply an incredible watch. It’s a standing watch. It’s a killer watch,” enthuses George

Bamford, of Bamford Watch Division, and a Grand Prix of Horlogerie de Geneve jury member. “I imply, simply calling it the Freak is spectacular sufficient as a result of that should have been an enormous danger when the gathering was first launched over 20 years in the past. However then you have got all that design content material, these massive concepts. It’s freaking nuts. It’s freaking mad.”

In 2023, the Grand Prix of Horlogerie de Geneve named Ulysee Nardin’s Freak One the winner of its ‘iconic’ class, acknowledging this newest iteration of the road debuted in 2001 – beneath the management of Rolf Schnyder and the watchmaking radicalism of Carole Forestier and Ludwig Oechslin – as totemic of one thing larger than itself: a shift in the way in which watches have been conceived and, in flip, perceived.

Right here was a watch with no crown – the show is adjusted utilizing the bezel, the watch wound utilizing the casebook. Extra spectacular nonetheless, right here was a watch and not using a dial or palms, utilising the motion itself to show the time and, in flip, proposing that the motion might discover visible expression as a form of kinetic artwork. Right here was one which additionally took a brand new strategy to supplies, being the primary watch with a silicium escapement. Small marvel then that the Freak line has garnered some 20 patents for Ulysee Nardin.

“What made the Freak doable was that Rolf Schynder, when he acquired the corporate in 1983, was decided to make substantial investments within the manufacture. Extra importantly, he aimed to determine a manufacture with its personal imaginative and prescient,” explains Clemence Le Rolland, Ulysee Nardin’s model director for South East Asia and Oceania. Certainly the impact of that imaginative and prescient was, nonetheless, higher than maybe he imagined.

“[The Freak] deserves its present repute for initiating the period of ‘fashionable’ watchmaking,” argues Le Rolland. “This period shifted the main target away from a classical, albeit high-end, strategy to watchmaking to 1 that prioritized creating one thing fully completely different and progressive. It impressed different watchmaking manufacturers and introduced a twist to haute horlogerie.”

Bamford agrees. He means that with out the Freak – a watch given extra credibility in coming from an organization of historic pedigree, courting again to 1846 – doubtlessly new manufacturers the likes
of Richard Mille or Urwerk, each additionally recognized for unconventional approaches to look at design,
would have had a tougher time establishing a market following their launch quickly after. Possibly the
timeline of contemporary watchmaking needs to be conceived as being BF and AF: Earlier than the Freak and After
the Freak.

“We’re extra used to seeing strange proposals in watchmaking extra usually now. Even in that context the Freak stays mesmerising: you have a look at it and instantly ask your self ‘so how does this work?’. Figuring that out for your self is a part of what makes the design intriguing,” he suggests. “However what I believe is very telling is that Ulysee Nardin was taking that strategy so way back. To actually recognize the Freak it’s a must to have a look at [watchmaking] historical past and recognize what its launch did for the watch world at massive. It’s akin to Swatch or G-Shock – it’s simple to miss how radical they have been once they have been launched”.

Certainly, these and different pioneering watches could be too readily appreciated now as primarily being aesthetic leaps ahead. And, as notes Maximillian Busser, Grand Prix of Horlogerie de Geneve jury member and founding father of MB&F – a model that additionally benefited from the trail paved by the Freak – the assorted iterations of the Freak have managed to be unconventional whereas additionally being light-weight, compact and comparatively streamlined. In contrast to so many different unique watches, they’ve additionally managed to stay comfortably wearable even on a small wrist – one thing Busser cites as being a serious trial within the creation of his personal timepieces. And but, he stresses, all that’s to overlook the true import of those groundbreakers.

“Certain, earlier than [the likes of the Freak, RM001, the UR103 or the Harry Winston Opus 1] the look of high-end watchmaking was extremely traditional and conservative. However that’s not why for me the Freak
needs to be thought of one of many nice modern watchmaking benchmarks of the early 2000s,” says Busser. “Reasonably it’s as a result of it additionally required the event of an extremely advanced expertise to make it come to life. These sorts of watches are usually not solely about design. They’re not nearly a properly designed packaging of an present motion. They characterize overcoming huge technical challenges. The Freak’s lack of a crown is a living proof. Because the motion activates itself a conventional crown-stem wouldn’t have labored. And the answer simply makes the watch that rather more ground-breaking.”

From the Freak’s Twin Direct escapement – at a time when a watchmakers creating their very own escapement was largely unparalleled, George Daniels apart – to the concept of orientating the blades of the steadiness wheel to use air resistance for a extra fixed amplitude; from the massively improved power transmission of the Grinder computerized winding system to, extra just lately, the escapement being handled with a silicium and artificial diamond plasma end for abrasion and shock resistance… The Freak collection has saved the improvements coming, with out the unique shedding its relevance.

“Remarkably, though a large number of recent concepts have emerged since then, the Freak continues to face out as a extremely artistic and distinctive watch,” argues Le Rolland. Certainly, in a manner the Freak has come to interchange the marine chronographs, with which Ulysee Nardin has lengthy been intently related, as essentially the most direct expression of what the model stands for at the moment. Merely put, “it [expresses] Ulysse Nardin’s unconventional, avant-gardist mindset in its strategy to watchmaking.”

This text first appeared on WOW’s Legacy 2024 difficulty.

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