Brunswick 40.5 Jump Hour 'Celestial'

Countless watches have evoked the moon and stars throughout history, but have any done so with quite the same poetic charm as Fears’ Brunswick Jump Hour ‘Celestial’? The watch’s singular achievement is not the selection of the highest grade mother-of-pearl for its lunar centre, or the absorbing aventurine outer dial that contrasts so effectively with the silver-printed minute markers and numerals.

It is not the Breguet-style numerals themselves, custom designed by Lee Yuen-Rapati, or even the elegant jumping hour mechanism displayed at 12 o’clock - a revival of Christopher Ward’s JJ01 module. It is the way that every single element of the watch, from the onion crown to the Brunswick’s cushion-shaped case - without a single flat plane or straight line to its name - comes together to evoke a romantic vision of the night sky that belongs unapologetically to a bygone age. Modern manufacturing gives it the build quality and presence that you expect, but aesthetically, nothing on this watch breaks the spell - no awkwardly modern typography or off-the-shelf date window that nobody thought to remove.

The only real concession to utility is the minute hand, polished to a fine finish and perfectly sized to be legible without intruding. From start to finish, the watch epitomises the kind of diligent, coherent commitment to an idea, expressed through material choices and uncompromising design, normally found on watches ten times the price.