The (Mostly) Affordable Indie Brand Edition: Nomos Redesigns The Club 701, Awake and Alain Silberstein Team Up, Beaubleu Launches Ecce, Sternglas Takes Art Deco Inspiration, Speake-Marin Updates Adacemic

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. You might notice that there haven’t been any major watch releases in the past few days. Well, that doesn’t stop this newsletter. I took this opportunity to round up some fantastic (and some really, really affordable) indie pieces that will make it worth your time

Just a quick reminder that I recently started a Patreon where you can get a couple of more pieces of content, including a sixth edition and a digital PDF magazine version of the newsletter. The inaugural sixth edition was all about the sterile secret watches of MACV-SOG, as inspired by the Praesidus Rec Spec MACV-SOG.

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In this issue:

• Nomos Redesigns One Of Their Most Popular Models, The Club 701

• The Awake Alain Silberstein 100th EEIF Anniversary Is The Most Affordable Way To Own A Watch From The Famed Designer

• Beaubleu Lauches Their First Permanent Collection, The Very Funky Ecce

• Sternglas Crosses Over From Bauhaus-Inspired Designs Into Art Deco With The New Sedius

• Speake-Marin Updates Their Least Expensive Academic Line With An Incredible ‘Medium Dark Shade Of Pink-Red’

Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 58 seconds

👂What’s new

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Nomos Redesigns One Of Their Most Popular Models, The Club 701

The Club was a huge deal for Nomos Glashütte. The watch was introduced in 2007, more than 15 years after the company was founded. But it brought something new to the brand, something radically different from what they did up to that point. They built their name on Bauhaus-inspired pieces like the Tangente and Tetra, but the Club was their more traditional looking watch, one that was supposed to be more casual and sporty, an entry level offering that came in at €1,000. And of course, it was a complete hit, with numerous models split into two branches of the line, Clubs Sport and Club Campus. The watch was so popular that the original model, the ref. 701 was kept in production for 10 years and discontinued in 2017. Now, Nomos is bringing this super popular original back to it’s lineup with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it redesign.

Nomos decided to bring the fan-favorite watch in its most original format. You still get a 36mm wide highly polished stainless steel case that measures a svelte 8.2mm. There’s a sapphire crystal on top and you have a choice of a crystal or solid caseback out back. So, it’s the exact same case as before, meaning all the redesign took place on the dial. But it could be so subtle you would hardly notice it if you didn’t have both versions side by side.

The silver plated dial in the new version gets a brighter shade of white, while the lacquered numerals have gotten a bit bigger and are now outlined in black with Super-LumiNova inside. The small seconds dial is also increased in size, snailed and now gets numerals at 20, 40 and 60. The simple hands are black with the center painted red and they pop spectacularly from the white dial.

Inside is the same Alpha movement that you can find in other Club models. The in-house built movement runs at a rate of 21,600vph and has a power reserve of up to 43 hours and if you opt for the transparent back you will get to see decorations not often seen at this price range - Glashütte ribbing, blued screws and gold-coloured engravings. The watch comes on a brown Horween leather strap with red stitching, just like the original.

The new Club 701 is not a limited edition and can be purchased from the brand now. The closed caseback version will set you back €1,300, while the open one is priced at €1,500. See more on the Nomos website.

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The Awake Alain Silberstein 100th EEIF Anniversary Is The Most Affordable Way To Own A Watch From The Famed Designer

The Éclaireuses et Éclaireurs israélites de France is, as it’s translated name (Jewish Guides and Scouts of France) reveals, a Jewish Scouting and Guiding organization in France founded in 1923 and has about 4,000 members. Among these members is Alain Silberstein, the famous French watch designer. Silberstein has been part of the organization for half the time it’s been around, and for a long time has been managerially active in Jewish scouting organizations. The organization is celebrating it’s 100th birth day this year, and to mark it, Silberstein teamed up with French watch brand Awake to create the Awake Alain Silberstein 100th Anniversary of the EEIF 42mm watch. Not only is it a great looking piece that marks a great anniversary, it’s also one of the cheapest ways to get one of Silbersteins pieces.

The cost is kept low with the materials used, but that doesn’t mean it’s just a cheap plastic watch. Awake is known for their experimentations with materials, and this collaboration with Silberstein is focusing on environmental responsibility. The watch case is made out of Ocean Composite, a blend of recycled polymers such as fishing nets taken out of the ocean, while the strap is made out of BioPoly, another type of recycled plastic.

The case measures 42mm wide and 11.9mm thick, with the recycled nature of it giving it a fantastic look with a deep blue base with lighter blue and white specks dotted all over it. Contrasting the dark blue is a red anodized aluminum crown and matching strap buckle.

But the real attraction has to be the dial (and hands), which is instantly recognisable as a Silberstein. According to the designer, he took inspiration from a compass, something that is essential to a scout. He placed two other important scouting symbols on the strap ends, including a tent and a hand in the form of a scout’s salute. The face design includes text from the organisation printed on the inside of the crystal in both French and Hebrew as well as a number of organisation icons and symbols. At the centre of the watch, printed on the crystal, is a lion which is part of the EEIF seal. The watch has very distinct hands, with the minute hand being an oversized arrow that expends to both sides of the pivot point, while the hour hand is a stubby white triangle with a thick red border.

Inside the watch is a Miyota solar powered quartz movement, and seeing as how the Citizen Group owns Miyota you can assume that it’s a good movement. Unfortunately, Awake doesn’t give much more detail on it.

The watch doesn’t seem to be a limited edition and can be purchased from Awake right now. Price is set at €220, without VAT. See more on the brands’s website.

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Beaubleu Lauches Their First Permanent Collection, The Very Funky Ecce

There’s only so many ways you can display time. If you manage to come up with a new way, something that will stand out, your chances of being remembered if you are a new brand are much higher. MeisterSinger made a name for themselves by using just one hand to tell the time, Ressence has perfected the magnet-attached completely rotating dial and Mr. Jones has brought a hell of a lot of levity to their watches using a bather lounging in a pool ring to tell the time. An upstart French brand called Beaubleu is using this strategy, creating a unique way of telling the time. They first did it as an experiment with three limited edition releases and are now introducing their first permanent collection, the Beaubleu Ecce.

The Ecce is heavy on design flourishes, with an unusual case and very different dial. It’s sized nicely at 39mm wide, with a lug-to-lug of 45mm and a thickness of just under 10mm. The case is actually difficult to explain and it’s best to go see more pictures of it. My best attempt would be to say that it seems as if the middle case is placed within a caged with carved out sides that makes the swooping lugs into which a bracelet is integrated. The outer part that makes up the bezel gets a mirror polish, while the central part is brushed. The watch comes in two versions - a regular steel version and a PVD-gold coated one.

The dial is just as unusal as the case. It comes in three versions. The Ecce Vesperal has a great looking brushed silver dial that matches the bezel with blue accents. Then there’s the Lys which has the PVD gold case, but the dial is also gold. The Smalt has a blue dial and embossed pyramid texture. The time is told through three very unique circular hands - a large running seconds circle, a small hours circle, and a medium sized minutes circle in between.

Inside all three versions is the Japanese-made automatic Miyota 9015. This is a reliable and familiar movement that has been seen in a TON of microbrand watches, mostly because of it’s thinness of just 3.9mm making it easy to implement into a range of watches, low price, accessibility and easy repairs that can be done by any watchmaker. It has a ball bearing rotor, a second stop and a date with a quick-change. It beats at 28,800 vhp, 42 hours of power reserve and has a stated accuracy of -10 to +30 seconds per day. The watch comes on a leather strap or a really nice looking integrated stainless steel mesh bracelet.

Unlike their previous releases, the Beaubleu Ecce will be a regular, non-limited edition and is available for purchase now. If you want the watch on a leather strap it will cost you €890 and €990 on the steel bracelet. See more on the Beaubleu website.

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Sternglas Crosses Over From Bauhaus-Inspired Designs Into Art Deco With The New Sedius

While Sternglas might describe their new watch, the Sedius, as “Bauhaus meets Art Deco” you won’t really find much Bauhaus in it. I understand why they did it - they are, after all, very closely linked to Bauhaus design in watches, but they should have done with the branding what they did with the design - ditch the Bauhaus link and completely embrace this absolutely stunning piece as just what it is, an Art Deco banger.

Intended to be a a very dressy watch, the Sedius is just on the verge of being too large to be considered as such. The stainless steel highly polished case measures 40mm wide, has a 47mm lug-to-lug and is just 8mm thick, excluding the crystal, which is sapphire with an AR coating. Not helping it’s cause as a dress watch is the fact that there is no prominent bezel, making the watch look larger than it actually is. However, if you can get over this one thing, everything else seems just great.

The Sedius comes in two variants - one in polished stainless steel and the other gets a gold colored finish. Each version gets it’s own dial, but there are several elements that are shared between the dials - it’s a sector dial that has 12 outer dashes, a minute track subdivided into four ticks and four sectors have the 3, 6, 9 and 12 numerals in a very 20s and 30s style type. Both versions also get the same leaf shaped hands.

The gold version gets a black dial that has a slight brown tint in one of the sectors and gold colored hands. The steel version has a blue-on-white colorway, with a brushed silver sector and a matte white background. The hands are blue. Not heated blue, but rather painted blue, which is fine, especially at this price point.

To keep the price low, Sternglas fits the watch with Seiko’s VH31 meca-quartz movement beating at four ticks per second. The movement has a battery life of up to 24 months and a rate accuracy of ± 15 seconds per month. The gold version comes on a black leather strap, while the silver version gets a nice blue strap.

Here’s the best part of the watch - the price. At €279, you would be hard pressed to find a much better looking ‘dressy’ watch. You know what’s even better? Their website is showing the watch priced at €249 at the moment. And at that price, all of it’s potential shortcomings (large size, quartz movement, a possibly lower quality leather on the strap) can be easily forgotten. See more on the Sternglas website.

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Speake-Marin Updates Their Least Expensive Academic Line With An Incredible ‘Medium Dark Shade Of Pink-Red’

Just like the Beaubleu approached their time telling with a twist, so does Speake-Marin. Their schtick is a statement dial and has been over the entire collection. Most recently, they have updated their Academic series, their more affordable (but not really cheap) line that now includes the Academic Rouge.

At Watches & Wonders Shanghai, Speake-Marin has revealed a red-dialed timepiece that continues its Academic series, aptly named the Academic Rouge. They seemed to have put a lot of thought into choosing the right shade of red, as the lacquer comes in a Pantone 188C shade — a hue described as a “medium dark shade of pink-red” was specifically selected to evoke an elevated, sophisticated, and vibrant mood.

Aside from its intense color, the dial is offset by large Roman numerals that dominate each quarter mark. The three-dimensional numerals are coated in a matte finish and imbued with Super-LumiNova. In between the 12 and 3 o’clock marks is a small seconds indicator, while the center gets a rhodium-plated handset, with a heart and spade shade hour and minute hands.

But it’s not all about the dial. Even the case is an attraction. It comes in 38mm and 42mm sizes and a somewhat rare Picadilly shape that’s all round and tubular. Despite being super classical, it is made from grade 5 titanium. There’s also the large fluted titanium crown, sapphire crystal glass on both the front and back with anti-reflective coating and a grey leather strap with a titanium folding buckle.

Inside the watch is the in-house Calibre SMA03 automatic winding movement. It boasts a fully integrated micro-rotor which offers a power reserve of 52 hours. It is beautifully hand decorated and angled with haute Horlogerie finishing, all of which can be admired through the transparent exhibition back.

The Speake-Marin Academic Rouge is not a limited edition in either size, and they are both available now for purchase at a price of CHF14,500 for the smaller version and CHF14,900 for the larger version. See more on the Speake-Marin website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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Hands on with the Rado DiaStar Original Skeleton

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A review of the Girard-Perregaux Laureato 38mm

⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

The new Nivada Grenchen Super Antarctic 3-6-9 Tropical may well be a new gold standard for “fauxtina”

A small, signed screw-down onion crown at 3 o’clock adds another touch of midcentury softness to the mix here, while also helping the Super Antarctic 3-6-9 Tropical to reach a field-ready 100 meters of water resistance. For the caseback, Nivada Grenchen pays tribute to its work with the U.S. Navy Deep Freeze 1 South Pole expedition in 1955 and 1956 with a gold ion-plated caseback medallion, showcasing a research station amid a rugged Antarctic ice field. Read the whole review on A Blog To Watch.

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Marc-André Leclerc was the best alpinist of his generation, a quiet, unassuming Canadian known for bold ascents of some of the world’s most iconic peaks. At the age of 25, he traveled to Alaska to join climber Ryan Johnson for a first ascent outside Juneau. They never came back, and a frantic nine-day search left more questions than answers.

• By now you know i love the oral history genre, where a bunch of witnesses to an event come together for one article and tell their story. This is the oral history of The School of Rock, a generation defining movie about music.

• Hank Asher was a drug smuggler with a head for numbers — until he figured out how to turn Americans’ private information into a big business.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Remember that video Saul Bass made as a proof of concept for the Bell Telephone company logo I posted the other day? It reminded me of this old video about the most iconic logo of all time.

💵Pre-loved precision

Buy and sell your watches. Think of this section like old school classifieds - i don’t guarantee anything except that a bunch of people will see your ad and I’ll put the buyer and seller in touch. Want to advertise your watch? Contact us 

• LOOKING TO BUY: One of our readers is looking to purchase three very specific watches: an Islander ISL-133 Mother of Pearl, a Sinn 556 Mother of Pearl or a Zelos 300m GMT Mosaic Mother of Pearl. If you’re selling any of these, reach out to us and we’ll put you in touch

• FOR SALE: Longines Heritage Skin Diver, box and papers. €1400. Reach out to us and we’ll put you in touch

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