For their second collaboration, Swiss watchmaker Hublot and American contemporary artist Daniel Arsham went for something a bit more durable than snow: sapphire crystal.
Set to make an entrance in London Friday, the Arsham Droplet is modeled after a pocket watch but can also be worn as a necklace or placed in a stand that turns it into a table clock.
Arsham, whose first play after being appointed Hublot ambassador in 2023 was a giant sundial carved in a snowy mountainside, set his cap on sapphire after seeing how it was made during his first visit to the watchmaker’s factory.
“A lot of my work uses crystal, specifically quartz, amethyst, and references these types of geological materials,” he told WWD exclusively. “When it begins, it’s a very natural form and it’s honed and milled into the components of their sapphire cases. I immediately knew I wanted to use this as a base material for the Droplet.”
He decided to go for a pocket watch as much of his artistic practice centers on blending eras, treating artefacts such as antique statuary or Pokémon figures as relics on equal footing.
“This object looks like something with the past, it recalls this way of telling time that’s from another era, but it feels like a kind of technology of the future,” he said. “It’s this sort of forward-looking, reverse-thinking timepiece, something that feels as if it is reaching into the future and pulling from the past with the joint in the present.”
And at a time where most use their phones to check and mark their time, a watch is “more than just an object to tell time, it’s a sculptural proposition,” an impression reinforced by carrying it in one’s hand, for Arsham.
The design, shaped like a curving teardrop, stemmed from Arsham’s desire to challenge those he works with to do something new and rethink their abilities. For Hublot, there’s the sapphire expertise but also the mechanical habits of a watchmaker.
“The manufacture is very technical as you would expect and symmetrical, so it’s the first object they’ve done that is asymmetrical,” he said.
The Arsham Droplet owes its organic contours to the shape of the hand, its size to the movement inside and its delicate green palette to the tint usually seen on the edge of a piece of glass, caused by iron oxide in the material.
“Normally the sapphire is very thin and flat — obviously it’s trying to stay lightweight — here the thickness of it bends the light and so the way it looks and here it almost looks like a water droplet,” the artist explained.
Housed in a titanium case with rubber bumpers featuring a double sealing system and Hublot’s signature six H-shaped screws, it comes with two titanium chains as well as a stand made of titanium and mineral glass that magnifies its face into a table clock.
For Hublot chief executive officer Ricardo Guadalupe, the Droplet is indeed not just collectible but also a condensate of many firsts for the brand.
“It was a real challenge for us as this is something that has never been done,” he said. “We needed to find a way to bring [Arsham’s idea] to life while being true to the Hublot DNA including elements such as the sandwich construction, the patented one click system, the use of sapphire….”
Take the chain, for example. “For this we had to work with jewelry suppliers to create the chain — made entirely in titanium, in the right proportions, weight, length and measurements,” the watch executive continued. “This was completely new for Hublot.”
Another challenge was the table stand, which acts as a magnifying glass and was the element that took the longest time according to Guadalupe. “There have been a lot of challenges, but no failures,” he added.
Made in a limited edition of 99, the timepiece embarks Hublot’s Meca-10 manufacture movement featuring a 10-day power reserve and is priced at 80,000 Swiss francs or $88,000.
