One of my absolute favorite discoveries at last year’s Watches & Wonders wasn’t even at Watches & Wonders, but at a presentation at the Beau Rivage hotel by Guillaume Laidet and Théo Auffret. Their new brand, now known as SpaceOne, was launching, and the watch they presented, a spaceship shaped bit of imagination with an impressive jump hour complication designed by Auffret, kind of blew me away. As a sci-fi nerd, I’m an easy mark for this kind of thing, admittedly, but even taking the futuristic, space stuff out of it, I was just incredibly excited to see this kind of purely imaginative watchmaking happening at such an accessible price point. It struck me at the time as being part of a wave of somewhat gonzo watch designs that take their cues from the highest of high horology, but bring the barrier to entry way down.
One year later, SpeceOne has released their follow up, a watch that I think in many ways is even more impressive than the Jump Hour. The Tellurium continues down the cosmological path set forth by the debut (and the brand name) with an astronomical complication that heretofore would be hard to imagine in a watch retailing for just under 3,000 EUR. This watch, in addition to telling the time and featuring a calendar with the date and month, tracks the moon’s orbit around the earth and the earth’s orbit around the sun via the heliocentric tellurium that is the core of the watch.
This is an admittedly more simple version of a planetarium watch that tracks the movements of multiple planets, the type made by brands like Christiaan van der Klaauw with prices that sail well into the five figures and beyond. But the relative simplicity of the Tellurium adds to its charm. In addition to being accessible in terms of price, it’s accessible in terms of our ability to understand and relate to it. The concept of the small ball that represents the earth taking a full year to make a single rotation around the central ball representing the sun is easy to grasp, as is the dance done by the moon relative to earth on a shorter timescale. By focusing solely on the earth and moon, the Tellurium reinforces that this is, in fact, a timepiece that’s whimsical but also practical, charting years and months in ways other watches don’t attempt.
Mechanically, Auffret’s complication is effectively a module built on top of a Soprod P024 movement, and incorporates a planetary wheel that is linked to the calendar found at the 6:00 position. The dial is aventurine (of course) and is accented with blue PVD treated titanium apertures for the calendar and Arabic numerals (12, 4, and 8).
The design of the case comes from Oliver Gamiette, a French designer who has worked in both the car and watch industry for over twenty years. You can see the influence of his work in cars in the 42mm titanium case of the Tellurium, which has a sleek appearance and allows for a wide open view of the headlining complication through a large, domed sapphire crystal. Watch enthusiasts who like the idea of last year’s jump hour but felt a little strange about wearing something that looks so explicitly like a spaceship on their wrist should feel a little more comfortable with the Tellurium.
The SpaceOne Tellurium has a retail price of 2,990 EUR and will be available to order beginning on April 9 for a period of four weeks. More information can be found at the SpaceOne website here.
