This watch was carved from a meteorite that hit Earth a million years ago

Watchmakers Toledano & Chan's Brutalist-inspired B/1M was sculpted from part of the Muonionalusta meteorite. (Toledano & Chan via CNN Newsource)

Oscar Holland -

In watchmaking, heritage matters. But while rival European horologists vaunt the traditions of their centuries-old workshops, design duo Toledano & Chan’s new creation has a longer history altogether: It was carved from a meteorite that slammed into Earth around one million years ago.

The Brutalist-inspired watch, dubbed the B/1M, was made from part of the Muonionalusta meteorite, the remains of which were first discovered in the Swedish village of Kitkiöjärvi in 1906. Since then, dozens more fragments — scattered around by the force of its collision with Earth — have been found across northern Scandinavia.

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While small amounts of the meteorite have been used on luxury timepieces before, artist Phillip Toledano and watchmaker Alfred Chan wanted to go one step further.

“You often see meteorite dials; they are not uncommon on watches,” Toledano told CNN via Zoom from New York, where he is based. “But an entire meteorite case, dial, lugs — all that stuff — is very unusual.”

The reason may be, at least partly, price. Toledano declined to disclose how much the fragment used for the B/1M cost, but he noted that raw meteorite can sell for more, per gram, than gold. The prototype watch is estimated to fetch between US$8,000 and $16,000 when it appears at the Time for Art auction, organized by Phillips Watches, in New York on Saturday.

“There are no meteorite trees, so it’s deeply expensive to work with,” Toledano said. “And the annoying thing… is that while when you work with gold, if you have bits and pieces left over, you can recycle them for other projects, but with meteorite you can’t.”

Muonionalusta meteorite is made primarily from iron, meaning the duo had to protect their watch with an anti-rust coating. But the material also holds a unique aesthetic quality: distinctive multidirectional striations, known as Widmanstätten patterns, that give it an “otherworldly” appearance that “glitters slightly,” Toledano said.

He and Chan paired their concrete-like watch case with a grey ostrich leg strap, offering the design a contrasting organic texture. The pair hopes to put the piece into limited production, though due to the nature of the material, each would have a unique appearance.

“For us, the interesting part (of watchmaking) … is exploring new materials and exploring new forms,” Toledano added.

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Toledano and Hong Kong-based Chan, who co-founded their watch brand in 2021, met via Instagram and bonded over a shared love of Brutalism. The B/1M prototype (like the steel B/1 model that preceded it) was inspired by the post-war movement’s angular forms — and, more specifically, the windows of New York’s Breuer Building.

Designed by modernist architect Marcel Breuer, the 1960s building is known for its austere, top-heavy form, punctuated by a handful of trapezoidal windows. It originally housed the Whitney Museum of American Art, though it is now owned by auction house Sotheby’s.

The iconic windows informed the asymmetric shape of Toledano & Chan’s design. And just as the Breuer Building is largely free from ornamentation, the faces of both the B/1 and the B/1M are void of numbers or symbols. (Toledano dismissed concerns this could make the watch difficult to read: “If you’re looking at that watch face and you can’t tell the time, you know you’ve got bigger problems,” the artist joked.)

And while Toledano was surprised by the original steel version’s popularity — the US$4,000 watches sold out in under an hour — he said it reflects the growing market for designs eschewing conventional shapes.

“I have noticed, in the last year or so, a real opening of the landscape for watches, in terms of people — and men in particular — being open to differently shaped watches.”