Gilt-y By Association: MING Debuts The 51.01 Halo

MING almost invariably uses luminous material as an instrinsic part of its designs, and not just for the sake of legibility; in many cases, the luminous material is used as a logical element of the overall design inspiration. This can be taken to some interesting extremes – the MING 21.01 chronograph, for instance, has a dial made of borosilicate glass which is laser etched with femtosecond pulses; six hundred voids in total are cut into the dial, and each one is filled by hand, one at a time, with Super-LumiNova X1.

The latest from MING, however, uses no lume at all. This isn’t the first MING watch to eschew luminous material – the 27.02 Ultra Thin avoids it as well – but a lumeless MING is still a rare event and there’s usually a specific reason for its omission. In the case of the new 51.01 Halo, it’s because the new MING is designed to be a dress watch, and it draws from certain elements of the classic dress watch playbook – but, since it’s a MING dress watch, that playbook is both celebrated and subverted.

At first the Halo looks pretty straightforward – gold case, gold hands, and the characteristic MING indexes, which are applied to the underside of the crystal. The design overall, in the context of its obvious dress watch intentions, reads as a kind of take on vintage gilt dials, although of course, the dial making process for the Halo, as well as other key manufacturing processes, are quite different from what you’d find in a vintage dress watch.

The movement is the MING 7380.M1, which is a hand-wound, 29.4mm x 2.70mm movement based on the La Joux Perret LJP7380. Modifications to the base caliber include extensive skeletonization, and a matte anthracite finish on the bridges with hand-polished anglage over a matte black baseplate. The movement runs in 21 jewels at 21,600 vph, with a 90 hour power reserve (which is very much not what you would get from a classic dress watch, and that’s a good thing).

The Halo is quoting classic dress watch design language in general, and the gilt dial idiom in particular, but the materials it uses are entirely different. Most notably, the case isn’t gold – it’s “crystallized” grade 5 titanium. Crystalized titanium has a large, visible grain structure which is created by first machining the case, and then heating it until the tightly packed crystal structure of the metal starts to change; the desired phase transition happens at around 1600ºF (MING says that for the Halo, the cases were brought up to a temperature of 1200ºC, or about 2200ºF.) At that point, so-called beta phase crystals start to form and grow, producing macroscopically visible crystals. Once these crystals form, you have to cool the workpiece very slowly – just a few degrees per minute – so that the crystals retain their size and shape, and once the case is brought back down to room temperature, it’s acid etched to reveal the crystal grain pattern. The whole process is similar in some respects to what you have to do to make a meteorite dial – in both cases, unusually large metallic crystals form and are revealed through an acid etching process – but with meteorite, the iron-nickel crystals form naturally in the molten cores of asteroids over millions of years. The basic principle’s the same, though. MING finishes off the case with a 5N rose gold anodized coating.

The hour indexes consist of a 5N rose gold-colored lacquer, which is applied to engraved hollows in the underside of the box crystal. Against the black lacquer dial, which is mirror polished, with brush finishing at the periphery, the resemblance to a gilt dial is unmistakeable, but the overall effect in combination with the crystallized titanium case is unlike anything you’d get in a conventional dress watch, vintage, neo-vintage, or modern.

The buckle is also crystallized grade 5 titanium, with the buckle and tuck “flying blade” design MING has favored in many of its watches, and the strap is by long time MING partner, Jean Rousseau Paris.

The MING 51.01 Halo is a limited edition of 150 pieces and is currently available for preorder, either from MING directly, or through its small but growing network of authorized retailers; the asking price at launch is CHF 10,900. MING new releases are all remarkable for different reasons, but what they all have in common is a sort of restless exploration of the preconceptions one might have about a particular genre of watches, whether a dress watch, dive watch, world timer, or chronograph. Watch design is generally more iterative than creative, but MING continues to be a very significant exception to the rule.

The MING 51.01 Halo is available now for pre-order; deliveries will take place six to ten weeks after an order is received.