The independent watchmaker’s new timepiece has an explosive, “chaotic” concept that mesmerises

It was 2018 when Fiona Krüger swerved away from her introductory Skull collection to introduce the Chaos line. And just last month, the Scottish artist and designer introduced a further addition to it at Dubai’s Perpétuel Gallery, presenting a compelling watch called Fractured.

Krüger’s Chaos collection plays with intangible ideas regarding time, centring around entropy and decay. Thus, like the first watch of the Chaos line, Mechanical Entropy, Fractured continues to be powered by the purpose-built, hand-wound Caliber Chaos I by Agenhor, a movement whose geometry matches the designer’s aesthetic vision, interpreting explosions and the chaos they produce. Within, the bridges are shaped like angular shards, and the wheels are formed as if a blast wave has hit them. The gear train stretches unusually from top to bottom, ending in a visible hand-painted spring barrel providing 50 hours of power reserve. Aside from the wild look, the movement is not complicated, only expressing the passing of time.

Here, the art is the focus—and while Mechanical Entropy’s hour markers continued the explosion on the movement side, Fractured’s dial displays something else entirely: the brokenness that an explosion leaves behind. Paired with the Eastern Arabic numerals that limited editions meant for Dubai’s ever-expanding collector market often have, this could have a multitude of symbolic meanings best left to each of the seven new owners to assign. What’s tangible is the deliberate sliver of visible movement that the beautifully crafted salmon-coloured dial crafted by Kari Voutilainen’s Comblémine dial factory reveals. The dial looks as if it was once whole thanks to the seamless flow of sunburst polishing across the two halves, whose cracked edges have been hand-polished by Comblémine’s artisans. The designer describes the dial as “edgy, yet elegant,” and I’d be inclined to agree. She continues, “A fracture is a visual representation of time, a moment of chaos etched onto our landscape. In contrast, a sun-brushed dial is very classic and well-behaved. So I loved the idea of taking this perfect dial and cracking it in two.”

Only available in an edition of seven pieces at Perpétuel Gallery in Dubai, it comes in a tonneau-shaped case made of hand-brushed and -polished recycled titanium for US$37,500. The two-tone green-and-copper colouring of the movement mirrors the corporate colours of Perpétuel, located in Dubai’s DIFC, colours that represent the flowing sands of the Arabian Peninsula and the UAE’s flag in equal measure.

This story was first published on Robb Report USA.