When we create a post on the Worn & Wound blog, we check a little box on the sidebar of our backend system to categorize the watch we’re writing about. The options are things like “Diver,” and “Chronograph” and “Dress,” which is about what you’d expect, and these well understood categories are appropriate for most of the watches we write about. But my absolute favorite thing is when a news release (or an actual watch!) comes across my desk that can only fit into one category, at the very bottom of the list: Unique. More than any other brand (besides perhaps MB&F and Urwerk), Ressence really has a lock on the Unique category here at Worn & Wound. One of many reasons we continue to be drawn to them year after year.
Their latest, the Type 9 IKE, is unique even within the Ressence catalog. Built on the (relatively) approachable Type 9 platform, which features an easy to wear 39mm case and a simplified version of the already incredibly stripped down Ressence Orbital Convex System (ROCS), the new limited edition is a collaboration with Japanese artist Terumasa Ikeda. It’s also a twist on a trend we’ve been seeing play out in the watch industry over the last few years, but you probably wouldn’t think at first glance that this is actually a very intricately crafted mother of pearl dial.
Ikeda’s work has a style that can be described as mixing very old craft techniques with a futuristic, almost sci-fi inspired design code. The Type 9 IKE’s dial looks like something you’d see looking out the portal of a spaceship approaching lightspeed, a swirl of colors and circles that is downright trippy.
To create the effect, Ikeda has built a dial layered with lacquer and raden, an ultra-fine mother of pearl inlay and ancient Japanese craft technique. The depth of the black lacquer contrasts sharply with impossibly small and thin pieces of mother of pearl in a kaleidoscope of color, placed intricately around the dial in a heliocentric pattern inspired by planetary systems and the very nature of the Ressence time telling layout.
One of the most significant challenges in constructing the dial was reconciling the shape of the tiny raden pieces with the curved dial of the Type 9. The mother of pearl pieces are flat, according to the artist, and also easily breakable. In order to bend them just enough to fit the dial precisely, each piece had to be soaked and bent individually to follow the shape of the dial. This is surely a slow and laborious process, and one quickly understands why only 8 pieces of the Type 9 IKE will be made once you consider the inherent challenges involved in completing a single piece.
The specs of the Type 9 IKE line up with previous versions of the watch, for the most part. The case is still 39mm in Grade 5 titanium, but here gets a DLC treatment for a stealthy effect that is appropriate for the sci-fi inspiration behind the dial. The watch runs on the ROCS 9 caliber, which features a simplified version of the Ressence’s orbital system, tracking just hours and minutes with a single interior hour ring. It’s an automatic movement (famously built on a simple ETA base caliber) with 36 hours of power reserve on a full wind.
The retail price on the new Type 9 IKE is CHF 32,000. Ressence
