Final week, Peter Speake returned to the unbiased watchmaking scene when he unveiled the primary items from his new model, PS Horology. Peter is one thing of a legendary determine within the indie watchmaking world. He’s the co-founder of Speake-Marin, which launched in 2002 after Peter spent a time period working as a watchmaker for Renaud & Papi in Le Locle, Switzerland. Speake-Marin is probably greatest recognized for the Piccadilly case design, named for the London district the place Peter spent the early a part of his profession restoring classic watches. The Piccadilly case, I’ve at all times felt, is one thing of an acquired style. I’ve come to actually like it, and see it as an emblem of an earlier period of unbiased watchmaking when these artisanal, handcrafted watches made in very small batches weren’t on the entrance of anybody’s thoughts. Occasions, after all, have modified for the higher, and indies are presently having the fairly the second, nevertheless it’s value remembering {that a} line might be drawn from any of the buzzy new indie watchmakers to floor in the previous couple of years all the best way again to Peter and his early 2000s contemporaries. To place it plainly, it’s nice that he’s again.
Peter based PS Horology again in 2022 and has been engaged on the primary assortment ever since. The Tsuba watches seen listed below are anticipated to be the primary of a number of initiatives for PS Horology in 2025. Whereas it may not appear like it on an preliminary look, there’s truly connective tissue between the Piccadilly instances of the early Speake-Marin days and the brand new Tsuba case. They’re fairly totally different from a design standpoint, however each draw on very particular historic design codes. For the Piccadilly it was throwback references to classical British watch and clockmaking, whereas the Tsuba attracts inspiration from intricately formed guards discovered on the finish of a grip on a Japanese sword. Tsubas have an extended historical past in Japanese tradition, and finally developed into extremely decorative heirlooms made by grasp craftspeople, which is one other clear connection to the watchmaking world that’s absolutely not misplaced on anybody at PS Horology.
The Tsuba is an built-in bracelet design, with a 4 sided case that includes scalloped corners and gently rounded surfaces all through. In response to PS Horology, case ending is a posh 5 stage course of that features the brushing of all exterior surfaces and sprucing the concave surfaces utilizing quite a lot of strategies to make sure they’re untouched in the course of the graining course of. Produced from metal, the Tsuba case measures 38.3mm throughout (from 3:00 to 9:00, crown excluded) and is 8.91mm thick.
There are two variants of the Tsuba out there on the launch of the model. The Tsuba Blue combines inspiration from classic watches, notably sector dialed watches, with the usage of fashionable supplies and manufacturing strategies. The middle of the dial is produced from a sapphire disc, and the body from anodized steel. The blue hour and minute markers have been printed instantly onto the sapphire floor and are supposed to mimic the look of warmth blued dial furnishings. In response to PS Horology, the printing approach leads to an excessive amount of visible depth from shadows produced by the reflection of the printed parts on the lacquer end on the underside of the sapphire.
PS Horology can be producing a model of this watch they name the Tsuba Dong Son, with a dial impressed by each Vietnamese and Japanese craft strategies. THe title comes from the Dong Son tradition, found by archaeologists in 1924 in northern Vietnam. The Dong Son flourished on this area between 1000 BC and the primary century AD, and based mostly on archaeological information it has been decided that they had been extremely expert within the casting of bronze. The dial of the Tsuba Dong Son relies on symbols discovered on bronze Dong Son drums that had been used for quite a lot of ceremonial functions by the Dong Son individuals.
The Dong Son dial is extremely intricate, with impossibly small parts of the motif minimize into its floor. The smallest of those parts, a chook, is simply 1.54mm tall. The dial symbols are additionally all sanded by hand, which in accordance with the model is the one method to obtain the right distinction between the symbols and the dial’s decrease floor. It clearly takes an excessive amount of precision in manufacturing to supply one thing like this at any scale in any respect (PS Horology is making 80 examples of the Dong Son).
The motion powering each of those watches is the 5401 caliber produced by Vaucher Manufacture. This can be a skinny (2.6mm) micro-rotor motion with 48 hours of energy reserve and a free-sprung stability.
It’s genuinely very thrilling to see Peter Speake tackle an lively position in a model (type of) bearing his title as soon as once more. He by no means actually went away, after all – he co-founded and developed The Bare Watchmaker earlier than leaving that undertaking in 2022 to begin PS Horology, and he sometimes used TNW to collaborate on restricted editions (with Frederique Fixed and Schwartz Etienne, for instance). However beginning a brand new model is a really totally different factor than designing the occasional LE, and it is going to be fascinating to see how PS Horology develops in what’s a very totally different period for indies than the one Speake-Marin started in.
Each variations of the Tsuba are restricted editions (80, as talked about, for the Dong Son, with the Tsuba Blue being made in 100 examples). The retail value for the Tsuba Blue is CHF 19,500 (pricing for the Dong Son version has not but been introduced). PS Horology
