De Bethune’s Latest DB28xs Sand Winds Puts A Dune Sea On Your Wrist
“The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped.” – T.E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
De Bethune first introduced the “random guilloché” technique for produce wavelike ripples on a watch dial in 2023, in the DB28xs Starry Seas and has made use of it since then in several watches – most recently, in the DB28xs Sea Tourbillon, which was released in April of this year. Generally speaking, the random guilloché pattern has been used to create the impression of stars seen reflected on ocean waves at night, but this time around, De Bethune has gone for something a little different. The DB28xs Sand Winds has a random guilloché dial, but with the titanium heat tempered to a deep golden color, so that the dial resembles a windblown dune sea, seen from above.
Although the stereotyped image of a desert is of an unending expanse of sand blown into wave-like shapes by the wind, such dune seas are in fact a relatively small percentage of the total area of any given desert – dune seas, for instance, make up about 20 per cent of the surface area of the Sahara. But they capture the imagination in a way that other arid landscapes do not, and have given rise in the imagination to creatures like the sandworms of Arrakis in the book Dune, which might inhabit a vast dune sea in the same way that whales ply the deep waters of the ocean.
A dune sea is properly called an erg, which is a term derived from the Arabic irq: a dune field. The random guilloché pattern is put to good use here in evoking such a field of ever-shifting dunes, which have what Buzz Aldrin called “magnificent desolation” when he saw the vast expanses of the lunar surface after the landing of Apollo 11. The stars on the dial would of course not actually be reflected in the surface of an erg, even at night, but they somehow seem to fit – as if you were in some enchanted version of a vast emptiness where, somehow, pearls emerged from the sand as they might from the bottom of the sea.
A little Easter Egg for the observant: the random guilloché pattern is not entirely random; if you look carefully, you’ll see that the ripples are bilaterally symmetrical down the vertical axis of the dial.
Inside is the famous De Bethune caliber DB2005. This is a well known caliber among De Bethune fans, and features the brand’s signature delta shaped bridge for the mainspring barrels, as well as the patented Triple Pare-Chute antishock system, a blued titanium balance with white gold rim weights, and De Bethune’s proprietary (and patented) balance spring which has an outer terminal curve that provides the advantages of a Breguet overcoil, but without the added height.
The design is more restrained than some of De Bethune’s more obviously complex timepieces but of course, that’s on purpose – the idea here was to produce a watch with a kind of visual serenity and sense of repose. An erg is a spectrally beautiful place – I have been lucky enough to be in the desert many years ago and watch moonrise over a sea of dunes many meters high, and the DB28xs Sand Winds captures that experience in miniature.
The DB28xs Sand Winds: Case, grade 5 titanium, 40.6mm x 8.8mm, with open lugs; 30M water resistant, with sapphire crystals front and back. Dial, “random guilloché” yellow titanium with white gold inserts, yellow titanium hour and minute ring with brown polished titanium hour markers. Movement, De Bethune caliber DB2005, running at 28,800 vph in 27 jewels with six day power reserve, triple pare-chute antishock system, De Bethune balance spring and titanium balance. US price, $85,000.
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