Sign In
(817) 503-2334
Contact Us
By:
The Blackest Watch Ever Made
So, here’s an article I never thought I’d write; what is the blackest watch ever made?
At a time when the bells and whistles of Smartwatches have been robbing market share from the traditional industry, high end mechanical watch brands have spent their time coming up with evermore ingenious ways to make their products stand out. And nothing appeals more to customers than to own the ‘most…’ of something.
We’ve already covered many of these categories in separate articles (lightest, heaviest, most complicated, most expensive, etc.) so now we are moving on to the blackest.
Anyone with even half an eye on engineering science news over the last few years will probably know the technology we’ll be talking about throughout this post. Invented in 2014 by Ben Jensen, founder of Surrey NanoSystems in the U.K., Vantablack is a so-called super-black coating formed from microscopic, vertically-oriented carbon nanotubes which trap and scatter light photons so that practically none can escape. Or, to phrase it more impressively, the material has a total hemispherical reflectance (THR) of less than 1%. In fact, it absorbs some 99.965% of visible light, making anything onto which it is applied for all intents and purposes a completely black void on which no detail can be seen at all from any angle.
Over the last few years, a number of manufactures have released watches with at least some features coated in Vantablack, the effect of which can be absolutely stunning. Below, we take a look at some of our favorites.
The MCT Sequential One S110 Evo Vantablack
The very first instance of a model utilizing Vantablack’s unique properties, the MCT Sequential One S110 came about in 2017 as a result of a meeting between the brand’s CEO and the artist Anish Kapoor.
How does Kapoor fit into this story? Quite simply, and for reasons unknown, Surrey NanoSystems sold the British-Indian sculptor exclusive artistic rights to Vantablack in 2016, causing uproar in the art world. (In one particularly mature and levelheaded act of retaliation, rival artist Stuart Semple developed a new pigment of his own called ‘the pinkest pink’ and put it on sale to everyone in the entire world, except Kapoor!)
Anyway, Kapoor’s collaboration with MCT, along with landing him accusations of shameless commercialization, also produced the 10-piece limited edition EVO Vantablack.
At its heart, the watch is a standard Sequential One S110. It has the same unusual time display as the conventional model, with the huge hour numeral presented on a set of five rotating prisms, while the C-shaped minute track fills in for the rest of the dial. A retrograde minute hand snaps back to the beginning once it reaches the end of its path, and the track shifts 90° to reveal the next hour digit.
On this edition, however, the inside of the case has been coated in Vantablack and makes it look as if all the visible elements on the watch are floating in the deepest recesses of outer space. There appears to be nothing supporting the movement or the front display, with the material’s nanotubes, just one millionth of a millimeter thick, absorbing any semblance of light.
The large, 45mm piece is powered by the in-house, 471-component MCT-S1.0 caliber, a square movement which is visible through the sapphire case back. Look closely, and you will see Kapoor has signed each one.
At $95,000 on its release, this was certainly not an impulse buy of a watch, but you will struggle to find a better conversation starter among your horologically-minded friends.
The Panerai Lab-ID Luminor 1950 Carbotech 3 Days
With Kapoor’s monopoly on the original Vantablack, other manufactures wishing to take advantage of its inimitable effects have been forced to turn elsewhere.
One such entity is Italian marque, Panerai. In 2017, they released their Lab-ID Luminor 1950 Carbotech, an enormous, 49mm composite carbon fiber-cased monster of a watch featuring a massively advanced movement which uses no lubricants of any kind and is guaranteed for an astonishing 50-years. Up front, the sandwich dial has been coated in a substance of Panerai’s own devising which nonetheless seems to use Vantablack’s technology. The material, which has not been given a name, features nanotubes to scatter and suck up any light, leaving it with the same depthless abyss.
Only the Superluminova-painted hands and numerals are visible on the dial and, because it is not possible to print on the nanotube coating, the ‘Luminor Panerai’ and ‘LAB-ID’ text has instead been embedded onto the sapphire crystal.
Inside, the caliber P.3001/C is a host of innovations, with main plates and bridges made completely out of tantalum-based ceramic, while the silicon escapement and twin mainspring barrels are both DLC-coated, all in the name of eliminating the need for oils or grease of any kind.
Limited to just 50 pieces, each costing around $56,000, the Lab-ID Luminor 1950 Carbotech 3 Days is a stunner from Panerai.
H. Moser & Cie
Industry disruptors and all-round mentalists, H. Moser & Cie have embraced the possibilities of Vantablack more than any other brand.
As early as 2018, they released the Endeavour Perpetual Moon Concept. This 42mm limited edition came in either steel or rose gold, with just 50 units of each produced, the former given a Vanta dial.
Then, in 2019, the family-owned and run business posted an Instagram image of the Venturer Concept Vantablack, a supposed 39mm watch with not only a Vantablack dial but also hands, ensuring it could not be read at all. The fact the post was released on April 1st did nothing to clue-in nor deter thousands of eager potential customers who demanded to know when the model was going on sale.
Spurred on by their backfiring April Fool’s joke, Moser launched a trio of Vanta-dialed models the following year, including the 42mm Endeavour Tourbillon Concept, the 39mm white gold Venturer Concept and the steel 43mm Venturer XL Concept. At least a semblance of good sense prevailed however when the watches were given merely blackened hands instead of Vanta-blackened. These, rather than being illegible as per the prank, served to demonstrate just how dark the dials really are.
More recently, 2022 saw the brand take a playful swipe at the Smartwatch with the unveiling of the Swiss Alp Watch Final Upgrade, a model looking for all the world like Apple’s finest. Except in this $30,000+ version, the instantly recognizable rectangular case houses a fine, hand wound in-house mechanical movement, and the running seconds sub dial sitting at the six o’clock on that impossibly black face has been made to look like the digital spinning wheel of an updating iMac.
And at last year’s Watches and Wonders Geneva trade show, Moser went one step further than anyone else so far when they turned up with their Streamliner Chronograph ‘Blacker Than Black’ concept, the first time anyone has used Vantablack to coat an entire case. Displayed against a background treated with the same substance, the watch simply disappears completely save for its four hands.
Sadly, for now at least, the Streamliner is going to have to stay a concept. As a material, Vantablack is too delicate and unstable to be worn or even handled. But Moser CEO Edouard Meylan has announced that the company is investing in ways to improve on the resilience of the paint—so the future could well be black.
Featured Photo: Mixed art by Oriol Mendivil.
