MING Goes Gold: The 37.04 RG Rose Gold Monopusher Chronograph
The first precious metal watch from MING is a study in contrasts.
The first MING watch, the 17.01, was launched in 2017 and it was as an opening move, something like pushing that second Bishop’s pawn in the chess opening known as the Queen’s Gambit, a seemingly modest beginning with unseen but consequential implications for the future. The modest part was obvious straight out of the gate; priced at under $1000, the 17.01 was an intentional exercise in overdelivering, offering not only an immediately distinctive design, but also, an abundance of watchmaking value as well. Since then, MING’s portfolio has expanded to include many complications (although so far, no chiming complications and I’m very curious to see what Ming Thein & Co. would do with the notion of a minute repeater) as well as the Special Projects Cave pieces, among which are unusual complications, exercises in exploring engineering limits, and watches that represent both engineering and design prototypes.
One of the more complex watches thus far in the MING repertoire, is the monopusher chronograph ref. 37.04, which was released in 2022 as a 100 piece limited edition, in a titanium case and with a guilloché pattern dial. The design had all the signature MING design elements, including the company’s flared lugs, complex case geometry, the use of layered regions of varying reflectivity and opacity to produce the optical inversion effect that characterizes all of MING’s designs, and the use of luminous material – not just as a utilitarian aid to legibility, but as an intrinsic part of the design.
The watch used a quite special movement, the La Joux Perret LJP5000.M1, which was originally designed by the cofounders of the movement construction specialist firm THA (Techniques Horlogeres Appliques), which Vianney Halter, Denis Flageollet, and F. P. Journe founded together in 1989. The movement is a tilting pinion monopusher chrongraph caliber and probably its most famous appearance (other than its use by MING) has been in the Cartier Paris Collection Privée Tortue Monopoussoir chronograph, which was released back in 1999. Recently, MING did something rather unexpected (well, I didn’t expect it anyway) which was release a new version of the 37.04 – but this time, in rose gold, with a rose gold guilloché dial. The new watch is filed under the Special Projects Cave header.
The whole idea of a monopusher chronograph in a titanium case is something of an exercise in contradictions, inasmuch as the monopusher chronograph has been, if you want to get picky about it, technically obsolete ever since Leon Breitling patented the two register chronograph in 1934. It is nice when you get right down to it, to be able to pause a chronograph at whim, and then restart it when and how you please an unlimited number of times, instead of having to reset to zero after every stop. Of course the monopusher chronograph continues to have its appeal among those of us (including me) who like the cleaner lines it gives a case and who find the evocation of the derring-do of the early days of chronograph design attractive, in a sort of silk-scarves-goggles-and-biplanes way.
The contrast between the somewhat aristocratic air of the movement, and the technically advanced (relatively speaking) case material in the original 37.04 is given an additional twist in the gold version. Rose gold takes us right back to the augustan roots of the monopusher chronograph, and gives the new version of the 37.04 a heft and authority in the hand and on the wrist which the titanium version doesn’t possess (to be fair, it’s not trying to possess heft either, or at least that is not part of the titanium model’s overt value proposition).
I have always felt, too, that if you want to emphasize case geometry, rose gold is a fantastic way to do it. For some reason it always seems to make the lines of a watch case – especially one with a complex construction and a variety of complex, contrasting, concave and convex shapes – clearer to the eye, and you get not just a greater sense of weight from the mass of the material, but more visual authority as well.
That is not to say that the rose gold version of the 37.04 lacks the cleverly contrasting and even mutually subversive elements to be found in the titanium model. The case itself, for instance, is something that would be quite difficult to produce without modern multi-axis milling machines, and the use of various layers for inversion effects is a direct result of access to – and just as importantly, understanding of – the potentials of modern materials.
The dial is made by Comblemine, the dial manufacturer owned by Kari Voutilainen, and the guilloché pattern has been executed with a CNC machine as, according to MING, the desired depth of the cuts could not be produced with a traditional rose engine (another example of using modern materials and methods in support of an effect not quite reproducible with traditional means). This is all the more true thanks to the complex dial construction, which consists of an SLN-filled sapphire dial over the gold dial underneath. While the application of Super-LumiNova X1 is the same as in the original 37.04, it gives a slightly different effect against the rose gold dial and case – the green seems a bit warmer and even a bit more vital against the gold background and gains in organic, almost chlorophyll-like saturation what it loses in post-modernity.
The watch was announced just ahead of a couple of other MING limited editions for Dubai Watch Week and it is sharing the news at this point not only with the other new pieces from MING, but also quite a few other DWW new releases. I think this is still one of the most interesting watches of the year, though. Generally speaking an existing watch in a new case material is not the most transcendentally interesting thing – it tends to make watch writers drag out the snooze-inducing word, “update” – but in this instance, I think the materials choice is worth sitting up and noticing. If nothing else MING and Ming don’t do anything casually or thoughtlessly and the 37.04 is, if I can offer an assessment, the perfect platform in a lot of ways upon which to launch the company’s first precious metal wristwatch. Although all that rose gold does make me wonder what they’d do with a repeater.
The MING 37.04 RG: Case, 38mm x 11.9mm, in 18k 5N rose gold, doubled domed sapphire front and back with double AR coating. Sapphire dial with subdial recess and inlaid Super-LumiNova X1 over a solid rose gold guilloché pattern dial by Comblemine. Water resistance, 50M. Movement, La Joux Perret 5000.M1 for MING, 5N rose gold coated and sandblasted skeletonized bridges and plates with hand-polished dome-profile anglage; monopusher chronograph, hand wound with a 38 hour power reserve. 20mm lug width with curved quick release springbars, and strap by Jean Rosseau Paris. Price, CHF 48,000, limited to 20 pieces world wide, with deliveries in Q2-2024. For more information and to enquire about ordering, visit Horologer MING.