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Opposites Attract: The Ressence Type 3 ‘Black And White’

The latest two Type 3 watches offer subtle refinements on classic Ressence designs.

Jack Forster6 Min ReadOct 7 2024

The first Ressence watches were shown as prototypes at Baselworld in 2010 – a time when many companies, but especially independents, were still competing vigorously to present wildly intricate new complications, and new ways of displaying time – the ten year period between 2000 and 2010 gave us URWERK, Ulysse Nardin and its variations on the Freak, incredibly imaginative work from MB&F, the Harry Winston Opus Series, and less well remembered but still impressive pieces of horological experimentation from brands like Cabestan.

Amazingly enough this short list is just the tip of the iceberg and pretty much the only thing any of them really had in common was the celebration of elaborate complexity for its own sake – it was as if, after three or so hundred years of buttoned-down, straitlaced, somewhat Puritanical watchmaking (the occasional wilder designs of the 1960s and 1970s, or the work of imaginative designers like Gilbert Albert notwithstanding) the watch industry was finally going through a long-delayed burst of almost adolescent exuberance. Or maybe a floridly obvious midlife crisis, depending on how you look at it.

With the benefit of hindsight, of course a lot of those designs have not aged particularly well, either aesthetically or mechanically – I can remember more than one meeting where a highly intricate watch was introduced that was still being tweaked by anxious watchmakers, who were hoping that they could somehow get five or six hundred parts that had never really learned to cooperate, to do their thing ten or twelve times a day in front of jet-lagged journalists and retailers. Into this somewhat chaotic world of more-baroque-than-not watchmaking, the first watches from Ressence were like taking an overnight flight from an Oktoberfest to a Zen temple in Kyoto.

Zoom InThe Ressence Type 3 Black

The watches were deliberately restrained in design, and made use of a previously unheard of design feature to make the indications appear as if they were literally floating on the surface of the dial. These watches – Ressence Type 3 – were originally launched in 2013 and although there have been many ingenious variations on the theme since then, the oil-filled Type 3 models are still what a lot of us think of when we think of Ressence. While complicated mechanically – the modules add over 100 parts – the mechanical innovations here are diametrically opposed to many of the other hypercomplications of the mid-2000s, and produce an effect of serenity rather than bafflement.

Zoom InType 3 Black – hour satellite is lower left; runner (rotating once every 180 seconds) at 5:00; oil gauge, 3:00; day of the week, 11:00; minutes, central minute hand with outer minute track; peripheral date ring, with pointer at 6:00

The two latest Ressence watches are the Type 3 White and Type 3 Black. These watches both use the Ressence ROCS, or Ressence Orbital Convex system, which is a module driven by a highly modified 2824/2 automatic base caliber. The version of the ROCS module used in the Type 3 watches is ROCS 3.6, which has indications for the hours and minutes, a function indicator, an oil temperature gauge, a day of the week indicator, and a date.

In both instances – Black and White – the watches are designed to look at feel as much as possible like a single, smooth surface – both to the eye and in the hand. The dial side and caseback are color matched, and the case middle and lugs are designed to offer, as much as possible, a single unbroken surface.

Zoom InRessence Type 3 White

The shape of the hands, markers, and Arabics are all designed around the same theme – the Arabics are cut with a round-tipped milling machine and have smoothly rounded, sans-serif tips. The hour dial has Arabics just at every two hour point, and the day of the week indication and oil temperature gauge colors are a slightly less saturated pastel, which adds to the impression of visual smoothness.

The ROCS system despite having been introduced 11 years ago, still has plenty of wow factor and it’s a big part of the reason that Ressence’s designs are aging so well – really, not aging at all. The orbital display is geared so that all of the indications are always, you might say, right side up. The Ressence hand logo at 12:00 on the hour dial, for instance, is always at the 12:00 position – you can imagine that reading the time would be an exercise in frustration if it weren’t). The upper and lower compartments of the watch are sealed off from each other, so in order to couple the ROCS system to the base caliber, Ressence came up with the idea of using a group of very small, very powerful permanent magnets as a driving system, which are enclosed in a magnetic shield to protect the balance spring from any interference. The oil temperature gauge is functional – since oil expands and contracts with temperature the total volume of oil in the upper case changes when the temperature changes and the gauge shows the optimum operating temperature range. To compensate for any change in volume, there’s also a system of miniature internal bellows.

Zoom InROCS module on the bench

The hands, indexes, and Arabic numerals are all filled with Super-LumiNova, which for both Black and White Type 3 watches, is a uniform green (the brightest color variation for SLN, which can be made in just about an shade a client wants, although as you move away from the blue-green end of the spectrum and towards the red, the phosphorescence gets less and less bright). The uniformity of color emphasizes the visual and tactile smoothness of the watches and of course, also gives you quite a mesmerizing light show.

Zoom In

These feel like some of the most refined designs Ressence has produced so far. The oil-filled ROCS system may have struck some folks as a bit of a one trick pony back in 2013 but the system clearly has much more creative potential than might have been apparent at the outset, and the careful adjustments made to the designs over the years give the Type 3 watches a wonderful visual clarity and sense of design continuity.

Zoom In

The new variations on the basic ROCS system and orbiting displays that Ressence has introduced over the years have never felt like novelty for its own sake, and they’ve never felt rushed or arbitrary. There’s nothing quite like them – they are part of a very small group of avant-garde independents who have managed the very difficult trick of a highly idiosyncratic design language that is also instantly recognizable (MING and MB&F are two other examples that come to mind) and Ressence is proof that there is a route from paradigm-shifting revolutionary to serenely refined classicism after all.

The 1916 Company is proud to be an authorized retailer for Ressence, at our Hyde Park Denver location. Contact us at Hyde Park Denver for more information and availability.