Harry Winston Retro Opus 8 Mechanical Digital Watch [Stunning Design Inspired By Vintage TVs & Pin Art]

The work of Harry Winston in collaboration with Frédéric Garinaud, the Opus 8 not only sports deliciously retro styling – purportedly based on the design of television sets of yesteryear – but also displays the time in a beautifully novel fashion using mechanical pixels, based on pin art mechanisms, that raise and lower to display the time when activated via colt on the right-hand side of the watch.

We tend to avoid posting quotes directly from press releases here on RP, however, in the case of this simply stunning timepiece you’ll excuse us for making an exception – not least because it offers a tantalising insight as to the Opus 8’s intricate internal workings

‘An exceptional and advanced timepiece, Opus 8 utilizes hand-wound mechanical movements to create a modern, digital time display. Inspired by pin art games, which create 3D impressions of objects pressed against them, the numbers in the display will only appear “upon request,” activated by a bolt on the right hand side of the case. Nothing appears until the mechanism is wound.

A plate joins together small segments, both mobile and fixed. Just underneath is a disc driven by the movement, which turns independently in real time. When the mechanism is wound, the pieces adjust to display the time. As the plate descends, the small segments remain visible, “blocked” by the crystal, allowing the hour to be read for 5 seconds. Technically, all functions are related, enabling everything to be displayed on demand – the minute hand turns the hour that then turns the AM/PM function.’

Sporting an 18K white gold case measuring 45.8 x 33.5mm, the Harry Winston Retro Opus 8 Mechanical Digital Watch which, incidentally, is also water resistant to depths of up to 30 meters, is strictly limited to just fifty units – all of which appear to have been secured prior to that watches official unveiling.

We are unable to establish quite how much each sold for but, as they say, if you have to ask…

[via ViaLuxe / Gizmodo]

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