BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
Ressence, another favourite of the indie watch scene, has just released a super limited-edition interpretation of its iconic display, reworked by Japanese artist Terumasa Ikeda. Ikeda is best known for his impressive skill in lacquers and inlays, and his work has been shown at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Working with Ressence, he brings his futuristic vision to life on one of the most unusual and charming time displays in the industry.
Terumasa was born in Chiba, Japan, east of Tokyo across Tokyo Bay, in 1987, and graduated with a Master’s Degree from the Kanazawa College of Art in Kanazawa in 2016. His works are renowned for their fusion of the Japanese art of urushi lacquering with modern technologies such as CNC machining to produce unique artworks. Having had a poke around his website, it seems like Ikeda is a big fan of The Matrix (1999), as a recurring theme of his work is the vertical lines of numbers in a modern font. This is just my speculation, but it wouldn’t surprise me; it was a groundbreaking movie.
The Ressence watch, called the Type 9 Ikeda, has a similarly modern and colourful theme. Using that urushi lacquer as a dark base, Ikeda has added colourful decorations to produce a futuristic view of the time. Raden is another technique favoured by Japanese artisans, it’s used to inlay mother-of-pearl pieces measuring between 0.1 and 0.2mm in thickness into wood. As well as being cool circuit-looking decorations, Ikeda has also used these inlays to represent the Type 9’s hands.
The Type 9 model has the simplest display of Ressence’s collection, displaying just the hours and the minutes in that oh-so-unique style of theirs. Most of the dial is the minute hand, represented by the straight line of coloured squares pointing to the edge of the dial. Inside that is the hour display, again represented by a line of coloured squares. The minutes display rotates to show the passage of time; however, special gearing keeps the hours display upright at all times. It’s a little hard to explain in writing, especially on this particular watch, so I would recommend you find a video of one of Ressence’s watches to see how it all looks in person. We have a couple of videos of Ressence watches on our Instagram page, in the video section, taken at Watches & Wonders Geneva 2025.
Making all of this happen is a self-winding ETA 2892 calibre, with a 4Hz beat rate and a 36-hour power reserve. Of course, it’s not a standard ETA 2892, and if you’re wondering where the money goes, the answer with Ressence is staring you in the face. Ressence integrates what it calls the “ROCS 9” module into the base calibre. ROCS is an acronym for Ressence Orbital Convex System, where the words ‘Orbital’ and ‘Convex’ are doing the heavy lifting. Orbital refers to the display, where the dials orbit and show the time, and convex refers to the fact that the dial and time disks are convexly curved, making for an even more impressive appearance in person. Setting the time and winding the watch (if needed) are performed by moving the caseback in one direction to set the time and the other to wind the piece.
All of this comes in a polished and DLC-coated grade 5 titanium case measuring 39mm x 11mm. Because the caseback is the control system for the watch, and is going to be interacted with a lot over its life, the Type 9 Ikeda has a splash-proof case suited for up to 10m, meaning it can survive a trip out in the rain or being splashed by a tap when hand washing, but should not be submerged. Nevertheless, it is a unique watch, and one I like a lot and could see myself adapting my habits to. Presented on a horse leather strap with a titanium ardillon buckle, and limited to eight pieces, Ressence’s Type 9 IKE watch costs CHF32,000.
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