BY JOVAN KRSTEVSKI
The Only Watch event for 2019 is scheduled to be held on 9th November in Geneva. And while there is still a fair bit of time left to go, the excitement has already started building as participating brands have begun unraveling their unique pieces for the charitable event. Just a few days back we talked about the beautiful Breguet Type 20 Revival Watch and today we are going to have a look at Tudor’s Only Watch 2019 entry, the Black Bay Ceramic One. Featuring a Completely blacked out look and exhibiting some interesting design and material choices this is a Black Bay like you have never seen before.
The case of the Black Bay ceramic one as the name suggests is made from Black Ceramic and has been bead blasted to give it a nice Matt finish. From a dimension and specification standpoint, it is exactly like its Black Bay Heritage 41 siblings which means that it has a diameter of 41mm, a height of around 15mm and is water resistant to 200 meters. Following the black theme, other elements on the case which include the bezel, the crown, and even the case back have been PVD coated to blacken them out.
The dial has been rendered in black and also has a matt finish to it. The hour markers are applied and are presented in a familiar combination of circles, rectangles and an orientation triangle at 12. To maintain the stealthy look of the watch the indices along with the snowflake style handset have been filled with black luminous paint. Further to that the minute track as well as the entire text have also been presented in black but have a nice glossy finish to them adding some sparkle to the otherwise subdued dial.
Flipping the watch over you are greeted with an open case back which is a nice surprise as this would be the first Black Bay model or rather the only Tudor watch after the North Flag to have an exhibition glass. Looking inside you get a nice view of the industrial looking in-house MT5602 that powers this watch. The movement operates at a frequency of 4 Hz, is COSC certified and offers a power reserve of around 70 hours. Also, to make things interesting and in line with the theme of this watch, Tudor has painted the oscillating weight black.
In all the Tudor Black Ceramic One is truly a one-off piece which does a give a glimpse of possibilities which we can expect from the Black Bay line up on the future. The watch would come attached to a rubber strap, but with a matt black alligator lining on top. The watch would be put up on auction on November 9, 2019, at Christie’s in Geneva and is expected to fetch between 4,500 to 5,500 CHF, which in my opinion is a target that the watch will easily surpass. Also, like all previous Only Watch auctions, proceeds from the sales would go towards supporting research on Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
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