Back in 2005, MIH Watch was first developed. It was a concept developed by Ludwig Oechslin and realised by Paul Gerber which is radically different from the mainstream trends of the watch industry – small, non-commercial and uncompromising. The watch showcased a completely new thinking of traditional complications. A sophisticated Annual Calender comprising of only 9 additional moving parts was unheared of so far. Produced not by a company, but by a group of friends.

Information from the MIH website:

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The Concept

In line with Ludwig Oechslin’s reductionist concept, the watch is pared down to its essential elements, yet retains a crucial complication, namely, the calendar. Watches with date displays are common enough, but few are able to show the day of the week, month and date and keep track of the different numbers of days in the months. Two types of mechanical calendar are capable of this: perpetual calendars, which are built around highly complex mechanisms that go so far as to recognise irregularities such as leap years, and annual calendars, which have to be corrected once a year at the end of February to take into account that month’s occasional idiosyncrasy. Even annual calendars tend towards technical complexity, with display windows often distributed around the entire dial for constructional reasons, making them counter-intuitive to read. Ludwig Oechslin has met this challenge head on and come up with a design for an annual calendar that is built around just nine moving parts – and its display is contained within one easy-to-read window. As Curator of the MIH, Ludwig Oechslin is debarred from working for other commercial companies. This is what led to the idea – originated in partnership with EMBASSY – of transforming the museum itself into a brand and earmarking some of the sales revenues for specific MIH projects.

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The Design

Industrial designer Christian Gafner was brought in to create the watch’s exterior. He was viewed as ideally placed to design a watch, the like of which has never been seen. His experience lies mainly outside the watch industry, as a consequence of which the MIH Watch has managed to sidestep the traditional design cues normally passed down through the generations of mechanical watches. It is, instead, reduced to its essential elements. Gafner resolved not to allow any labelling or logo on the dial other than the day/date display at 3 o’clock and the initials MIH (Musée International d’Horlogerie) replacing the 9 o’clock index. The fact that the watch is «Swiss Made» is self-evident, even if there is no wording to that effect on the dial. References to its watertightness are made in the accompanying documentation. The dial is kept matt black to optimise the readability of the superluminova-coated hands and indices, whose interrelationships are clear and unambiguous; a nice touch – the minute hand forms an unbroken line with the longer 6, 9 and 12 o’clock indices. The difference in length between the minute and hour hands is equivalent to the length of these three longer indices

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Some specifications:

•Diameter: 42 mm
•Thickness: 15 mm
•Waterproof: 100 meters
•Crystal: Sapphire with double sided AR coating
•Movement: ETA Valjoux 7750
•Functions: annual calendar, day/night indicator, single button chronograph


There is more information, pictures and a first hand review over at Monochrome: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This is a good article on the watches development and design: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

These are beyond cool Vito ! Great how they are so easy to read, and seem simple,
but you can see that they are something special too.

Great watches, and information ! ..Thank you !