The MING 20.01 Series 2, Featuring The Agengraphe Caliber

Since MING launched its first watch in 2017 – the now-famous 17.01 – the company has produced a bewilderingly diverse range of watches, and incorporated a very wide range of complications and unusual technical achievements, including, in recent months, the ultra-light LW.01, the 600 meter-rated Bluefin diver, and most recently, the aventurine-dial MING 37.08 Starlight. Although the range of watches is very broad, the consistency of the design language has been remarkable – every MING watch is instantly identifiable as a MING watch, and the company’s use of visual layering, control of materials opacity and reflectivity, and innovative use of lume as not just an aid to legibility, but also as an essential design element, give MING watches enormous continued appeal long after the actual purchase.

Despite the wide range of prices, MING watches generally deliver enormous value, both technically and from a design standpoint. Precision is always a subtext in MING watches, whether it’s in chronometry or case construction, or the execution of the company’s sometimes highly complex dials and hands.

One of MING’s most interesting watches, speaking of precision, is the 20.01 Series 2, one of which we have for today’s installment of A Watch A Week. The 20.01 is “Series 2” thanks to the existence of a couple of predecessors, the first of which – a concept watch – the 20.01 Concept S1 –  which was sold as a unique piece, in 2020.

The first series was extended later that year by the introduction of the 20.01 Mosaic, which was technically identical to the S1, but with some updated aesthetics, including an orange anodized movement plate, orange and blue chronograph hands (all 20.01 watches are central chronographs, with a center chronograph seconds, and center chronograph 60 minute hand) and with MING’s signature Mosaic dial. The Mosaic dial consists of a laser-etched sapphire disk with 2,625 individual etched elements at four different levels, which produces a quite mesmerizing visual effect – the rejection rate of dials during the manufacturing process is pretty high because the highly focused laser bursts introduce a lot of internal stress. The Series 2 proper was a 50 piece limited edition – MING watches are all either limited production or limited editions outright – and is long-since sold out. The S1, Mosaic, and 20.01 Series 2 are all configured as bullhead chronographs, with no subdials, and central chrono minutes and seconds hands.

The dial of the 20.01 Series 2 is a variation on the original Mosaic dial and shares the original’s complexity, and manufacturing challenges. MING starts with a Clous de Paris-patterned grade 2 titanium plate (which also acts as a bridge for some of the keyless works – that’s the winding and setting mechanism. Above the base dial is a gradient-printed sapphire disk, which is transparent in the center and which fades gradually to an opaque, saturated black at the edges (which is a beautiful effect aesthetically and which also ensures that the dial markers and registers are easily visible. Above that is one more sapphire disk, and this has been laser etched with a triangular Mosaic pattern, at three different levels, with varying opacities. There are a total of 3,300 individually etched triangular elements, and the crystal is 1.1mm thick, optical grade sapphire.

The Clous de Paris pattern is visible at the outer edge of the dial, underneath the double pulsometer and tachymeter scales. As with the S1 small series, the chronograph seconds hand is in orange and slightly longer than the blue chronograph 60 minute hand, which extends to a minutes track in composite Super-Luminova and ceramic HyCeram. The pulsometer and tachymeter scales are printed directly onto the uppermost sapphire crystal (partly for aesthetic reasons, and partly to reduce parallax error and improve read-off accuracy) and the hour and minute hands are coated with Super-LumiNova X1.

As is always the case with MING the effect of all that lume makes for some remarkable after-hours aesthetics. The minutes track and hour track make a strong visual connection to the skeletonized hour and minute hands, which lose nothing in legibility for being openworked – and the openworking allows more of the Mosaic dial to be seen as well. The 3,300 individual triangles etched into the crystal reflect and refract the glow from all that lume – in low light it’s hard to stop staring.

All versions of the 20.01 use a very unusual chronograph caliber – the Agenhor for MING AgenGraphe Cal. 6361.M1. The original AgenGraphe caliber was introduced in 2017 somewhat unexpectedly, in the Fabergé Visionnaire Chronograph, The movement was designed by the renowned movement constructor and complications specialist, Jean-Marc Wiederrecht, and it has a number of unusual technical features.

The first is the overall architecture of the movement – most of the chronograph works, with the exception of the column wheel and switching levers, are located more or less in the center of the movement, with the rest of the going train, including the mainspring barrel and keyless works for winding and setting, located along the periphery. The clutch system is a sort of combination of the lateral and vertical clutch – engagement is through a lateral clutch wheel, with no teeth, which engages with the center chronograph wheel, which also has no teeth. Engagement of the two wheels is maintained by their surface texture, but in order to prevent the chrono wheels from accidentally disengaging if the watch receives a shock, there is a second system of safety wheels. If the watch does get a shock and the main driving and chrono wheels disengage momentarily, the most accuracy you’ll lose is no more that about 33/100ths of a second.

The original AgenGraphe was self-winding; the MING 20.01 however is a hand-wound version of the movement, with a 55 hour power reserve and it’s adjusted to the traditional six positions. A complete analysis of the movement and its merits relative to traditional vertical and lateral clutch chronos would run to thousands of words, but special features include the clutch mechanism and safety mechanisms, an instantaneous jumping minutes counter, and a snail-cam system for resetting which avoids the strong and abrupt forces associated with the traditional hammer and heart-cam reset system.

Plates and bridges are anthracite finished, with diamond-cut edges, and the effect overall is of a watch that is both technically very forward looking, and very unusual design, but with a real classical feel to it as well. This is partly thanks to the hand-wound movement as well as the very clean appearance of the chronograph displays – one of the objectives for Ming Thein and the design team at MING was to produce the clarity of design for which the company’s known. In any case, I can’t imagine this watch with subdials, it would ruin the whole effect.

I think this is one of the most unusual, technically interesting, and harmoniously designed chronographs out there. It has a very strong idiosyncratic identity without falling into striving for effect through novelty, and it’s a textbook case of how to make something very complicated and difficult to achieve technically, look effortlessly graceful.

See it here