What We Know
Bradley Taylor, a Canadian independent watchmaker working out of a 1,000-square-foot workshop in North Vancouver, has released the Ardea, his third watch and first with an in-house movement. Taylor, a rising talent in the space, trained in Le Locle under Henrik Korpela, earned a Patek Philippe Level II service certification in Geneva, and produced two sold-out series before beginning work on the Ardea in late 2023.
The Ardea is offered in stainless steel or platinum 950 and measures 37.8mm in diameter with a 46.4mm lug-to-lug and a thickness of 10.9mm, including the crystals. The sapphire caseback is very slightly domed for wrist comfort, and the watch is rated to 5 ATM.
The dial is 925 sterling silver, engine-turned on a rose engine that Taylor estimates is roughly 120 years old, and he restored it over three months. The pattern is a 36-scallop rosette with a progressive phase shift between each concentric pass, producing a characterful swirling texture.
After the engraving, the dial is depletion-gilded, a silversmithing process that involves repeated heating and acid treatment until the dial’s surface is pure silver. It is then sealed with Zapon lacquer. The text and markings are pad-printed on a Tampoprint machine that Taylor also restored himself. The applied numerals are machined from solid platinum and hand-polished to a spherical shape. The dial lettering and wordmark were designed by Ian Brignell, a Toronto typographer whose work includes the Paramount Pictures wordmark. The dial assembly comprises 17 parts, including visible (and functional) fixing screws.
Ticking inside is the caliber 475RS, a hand-wound movement that measures 4.75mm thick and 31mm in diameter. The 475RS runs at 18,000 vph with a 40-hour power reserve. Its base architecture draws on select components from the Omega 30T2 family.
Everything else was designed and made by Taylor (approximately 80% of the components are his own work). The freesprung balance wheel is machined in-house from Grade 5 titanium with platinum eccentric timing weights, paired with a Breguet overcoil hairspring. The gear train wheels are solid 14K gold, each requiring roughly a full day of hand finishing. For a uniquely Canadian flourish, the caseback and ratchet wheel screws feature square-headed profiles produced via EDM (electrical discharge machining), a process capable of creating the square profile at a tiny scale.
The 475RS offers hours, minutes, and a retrograde seconds display at six o’clock. The retrograde seconds can easily be mistaken for a power reserve or even a retrograde date, until you notice how quickly it sweeps. Perhaps unsurprisingly, at this point in the story, Taylor designed and created the retrograde seconds mechanism, which is an integrated part of the 475RS’s design, not a module. Taylor ran the mechanism for a year before release, logging 1,440 reset cycles per day, to confirm that wear on the contact surfaces was negligible over the long term. The watch’s name comes from Ardea, Latin for heron, the birds that hunt on the Seymour River outside his workshop, snapping their prey out of the water.
The Ardea is priced at $62,000 USD in stainless steel and $82,500 USD in platinum 950, sold directly from Taylor’s workshop. The edition is limited to 50 pieces, and Taylor plans to make 5 to 10 pieces per year. The first year is already reserved, and further reservations are now open. The watch ships with a beavertail strap handmade by Terry Shen in Toronto, and a leather-and-aluminum box crafted by Charles Simon in Montreal.
What We Think
Following the Paragon and the Lutria, the Ardea is a huge move for both Bradley Taylor, the brand, and for the man himself. I got to see a production prototype of the Ardea this past weekend in Vancouver, and it’s a lovely thing in person. During a fascinating tour of Bradley’s workshop in North Vancouver, I was able to see where several of these distinct elements are made, from the rose-turned dial to the solid platinum numerals to movement components being cut on Hass CNC machines. The whole experience reminded me of my time in Josh Shapiro’s workshop in Los Angeles years ago. If you didn’t know what they were making, nor what a century (plus) old rose engine looked like, you might assume they were industrial artists. Heck, Bradley let me take the reins of his bead-blasting machine, and I blasted the titanium scales of my pocket knife.
Back to the point, the Ardea marks a notable accomplishment for Bradley’s work, and it’s been recognized (and supported) by several orders from collectors all over the world. I’ll admit some Canadian bias here (how cool are the Robertson screw heads?), but this is true boutique watchmaking. And even if we’re only talking about 50 pieces over more than a decade, it’s an exciting evolution for both the Canadian watchmaking scene and the one-man-with-a-plan watchmaking, especially outside of Switzerland.
While I’d love to do a proper hands-on in the future, the stand-out impressions I had from the Ardea were derived from the compact case proportions, the thoughtful, well-balanced, and very traditional dial finishing, and the minute-by-minute flourish of the retrograde seconds. If you get a chance to see one in person, be sure to spend at least a minute with it.
The Basics
Brand: Bradley Taylor
Model: Ardea
Diameter: 37.8mm
Thickness: 10.9mm
Case Material: Stainless steel or 950 platinum
Dial Color: Silver tone, zappm lacquer
Indexes: Solid platinum Breguet numerals, spherically polished
Water Resistance: 50 meters
Strap/Bracelet: Beavertail leather (or customer preference) handmade by Terry Shen in Toronto
The Movement
Caliber: 475RS
Functions: Hours, minutes, retrograde seconds
Diameter: 31mm
Thickness: 4.75mm
Power Reserve: 40 hours
Winding: Hand-wound
Frequency: 18,000 vph
Jewels: 23
Pricing & Availability
Price: $62,000 (steel), $82,500 (platinum)
Availability: Production is 5-10 pieces a year; the first year (2028) is sold out.
Limited Edition: 50 pieces total
For more, click here.
