The Armoury’s collaboration with H. Moser & Cie. was one of the most satisfying projects of my career. It started with friendly meetings with two people in the Swiss watch industry whom I greatly admire: Edouard Meylan and Bertrand Meylan, the leaders of H. Moser & Cie. 

In February 2020, Edouard and I participated in a podcast held at my newly opened store on the Upper East Side of New York. That was the last event we had pre-Covid. Ten days later, The Armoury NY had to suspend business for a few months as Covid clamped down on life in the city. 

In March, Edouard, Bertrand and I started a conversation about some sort of joint project. At the time, the future was a huge unknown but we all felt it necessary to keep pushing forward in new ways. I was fascinated with Moser’s proprietary expertise in handling Vantablack, the blackest substance in the world, and together with my colleague, Elliot Hammer, we began work designing a Vantablack-based collaboration watch. 

The concept behind the watch is the phenomenon of a total solar eclipse. This is the only time that you can see the corona (halo) of the sun. With that in mind, we placed a polished, red gold inner bezel that encircles the dial and shimmers as the watch moves. We also made another version that has a polished steel inner bezel. Personally, I kept a steel one for myself because my starting point for this project was Vantablack and I find the steel version slightly blacker than the red gold version. We also formed the markers of the watch in an unusual way, by leaving holes in the Vantablack coating serving as a window revealing small discs of red gold or steel on the reverse of the dial.

Thanks to everyone’s dedication, we somehow managed to make these watches purely over Zoom calls and e-mails. In two years, The Moser team in Switzerland, Elliot in New York and I in Hong Kong, never met in person. I consider myself hugely fortunate to see the project realized successfully and I was moved when the final product reached my hands. 

In January 2022, Elliot and I flew to Switzerland and started working on videos, photos and interviews with Edouard and Moser as part of the launch of the watch. We even had a musician, Noah Garabedian, write a song to introduce the watch. We released later that month, the first watch of the year to be released and to critical acclaim. 

These two pieces on auction are the only pieces that are not my property. I had set them aside early in the year as the property of my The Armoury’s team. The proceeds of the two watches will be split evenly among my team as a thank you for their hard work during these few Annus Horribilis. 

As a little bonus for the owners of the watch, I had a talented HK-based artist: Gabe Lau, make a pair of his fascinating and humorous watch sculptures to accompany the watch. Gabe went as far as sourcing Vantablack paint to recreate the dial of the watch.