Jewelry and watchmaking firm Harry Winston never fails to excite with its Opus series of watches and the 2013 edition is no exception. Trust the Harry Winston Opus 13 to try and pull wool over our eyes by showing us, well, not very much. Indeed, you might look at the watch above and wonder what the time is but we’d forgive you for getting a little lost. Believe it or not, it actually shows the old classic time, aka 10:10. Take a look below and see if this more obvious angle gives you a clue.
You can just about make out a pointer and what looks like a track of some kind… What we have here is a mad reversal of the ‘simplicity is best’ principle, with independent watchmaker Ludovic Ballouard deploying one hand for every minute and one for every hour too!. In total, the Opus 13 has 70 hands – 11 for the hours and 59 for minutes – so we have already gone on record with our bet that this watch has the most hands ever made. Each minute hand jumps into place as 60 seconds pass. Armed with this knowledge, reading off the time becomes a little simpler, sort of.
Doubting Thomases and pragmatists out there will be annoyed to learn that the movement (HW4101) does have a proper record to its name – one not bestowed by us. With 242 rubies, HW4101 has the largest number of functional jewels in a mechanical watch. Calibre HW4101 is quite shy, never really revealing how it gets up to its fantastically complicated tricks. We will not spoil the magic here…
