About
Not a Brand.
A Point of View.
Every watch here started as one I wanted and could not buy.
01
Who Makes These
One Person, and a Bench
I am Jon Butler. I write custom software for a living and I have been a watch enthusiast for over twenty years — long enough to have bought, sold, traded, waited on lists, and been sold a convincing fake.
I built the first forty of these myself, at this bench, mostly after the house had gone to bed. That is where the designs came from and it is why they are the shape they are.
Every watch we make still passes across it. The assembly moved to a team when demand outgrew my evenings; the final inspection did not.
Read how it started
02
The Principle
Take What You Admire. Change What You Would Change.
There is a whole industry in building homages — near-copies of famous watches, sold on the resemblance. There is another in mods: someone else's case, someone else's bracelet, a different name on the dial. I did not want to do either.
What I wanted was narrower and harder. Take the designs I already admired, change the specific things I would have changed, and end up with watches that are right by my own standards rather than close to somebody else's.
That is the whole brief. Every model in the range is the result of it, and it is why none of them is trying to be mistaken for anything.
03
The Movement
A Watch You Can Afford to Keep
There is little sense in owning a watch whose service costs as much as the watch. Ours run automatic and mechanical movements from the NH family — accurate, hacking, hand-winding, and serviceable by any competent watchmaker for a fraction of what the timepiece cost.
Which calibre a watch gets is decided by what its dial does, not by what sounds impressive.
- NH34
- GMT
- Viator, Viator II
- NH35
- Date
- Giudisa, AEQVOR, Aimée
- NH38
- No date
- Arcana, Volante, Podiere
Twenty-four jewels, 21,600vph, a forty-one hour reserve. The Initiale is the exception — hand-wound rather than automatic.
04
Why Membership
I Would Rather Know Who Is Wearing These
Membership is not scarcity. There is no queue here, no allocation, and nothing is ever sold out — I have spent twenty years on the other side of all three and did not enjoy any of it.
It exists because I would rather know the people wearing these than not. That is the entire reason, and it is worth saying plainly rather than dressing it up as exclusivity.
How It Works
Designed Here. Assembled to Order.
We hold no stock and nothing is built before it is bought. These are my designs — you are buying a considered thing, not commissioning one.
Thirty days
From order to delivery. The watch goes into production the day you buy it.
My hands last
Every piece ships to me first for final inspection, then on to you.
Numbered
Each watch carries a reference recording where it sits in our production.