About a year ago—or maybe two—I remember sitting in an Uber with Ben and some of the Hodinkee team as we drove down the Rue de Lausanne in Geneva, heading to Watches & Wonders. We had just grabbed a quick breakfast when Michael Friedman unexpectedly joined us. Yes, that Michael Friedman. The “AP, Michael Friedman, my friend’s cooler” rap lyric guy. The guy who just so happened to have also formerly been a curator at the Willard House & Clock Museum and the National Watch & Clock Museum, Head of Watches at Christie’s New York, a client advisor to people like Eric Clapton (during his pièce unique Patek years), and most recently the Head of Complications at Audemars Piguet.
Okay, maybe you don’t know Michael Friedman. But I knew him well and had some formative early-career experiences bumping into and getting to know him. I also knew he was working on a new brand, but had absolutely zero idea what it was. “It’s wild,” said Ben—or some approximation of that. “It’s not so much a watch as a cuff, with a bunch of diamonds.” What could that even mean? I had ideas in my head, but as they spiraled, they got further from the truth. As of a few months ago, we have the answer, and it’s not what I had envisioned.
The B-Theory Series 1 from Friedman’s new brand Pattern Recognition is, as Ben said, far from a watch in most respects, but closer than I expected. Yes, it’s jewelry. There are diamonds. And yet it’s got the bona fides of technical watchmaking and connections with the past without being a revival or a reissue. Instead, it’s an attempt at a horological reinterpretation of how we perceive time. Beyond the very modern form, the watch requires a bit of a primer in philosophy to understand its intent.
The A-theory and B-theory of time were concepts coined in 1966 by a philosopher and professor, Richard M. Gale. Look, philosophy was never one of my strong suits in school—Intro to Political Philosophy was (by my foggy recollection) my lowest grade my freshman year. But if I understand it correctly, Gale argued you could either assume that time has tenses like past, present, and future (where things used to exist, currently exist, and will exist) and that as we move through it, the universe is creating new moments to experience. That’s A-theory. B-theory suggests that all moments equally exist at once as equally real, and it’s just where we are that changes. Just because I’m in New York and you’re in your location doesn’t mean that either is less real or that there’s not something between us.
That’s the Pattern Recognition B-Theory, in a nutshell. Rather than recap Friedman’s explanation from Talking Watches, I’ll give you the breakdown of the genesis before getting into the practical specs, though forgive me if I go back to explaining in A-theory. There are a lot of things that watchmakers used to be able to do. Three-dimensional curved movements, specifically watches like the Movado Polyplan, have largely gone by the wayside. Not shaped watches, but movements built on a curve. Going back to A-theory versus B-theory, in the latter, it’s not that they were done before and are an old idea. They’re an idea that exists, just as this does. This isn’t modern; the Polyplan isn’t vintage. They just are.
Photo by Shota Akiyoshi.
The case and movement are a unified curved form, following the curve set out by the Polyplan. The Grade 5 titanium case measures 32mm wide but a very long 52mm, with 9.6mm total thickness throughout the 18° curve. The entire watch focuses on hand-finishing rather than material coating or treatment. Some surfaces are satin-polished and come out lighter. Others are darker and sandblasted. There are two versions available, so you can choose the dominant aesthetic.
The display is laid out consciously from top to bottom. At the top is a moon phase represented by a 6mm “moon-cut” diamond, grown in a lab in Switzerland, which allows the quality and cut to be controlled and the entire watch to be Swiss-made top-to-bottom. Friedman says this represents astronomy and the basis of time as we perceive it. Instead of a rotating display, a shroud rotates around the moon (and can be advanced by the side pusher). Below it is the tourbillon, harvesting that energy (metaphorically—this is a hand-wound caliber), and below that is our standard dial representing time as we understand it (with diamonds for the hour markers).
I’ll be honest, I rarely come to watches for my philosophical fill. Actually, I try to actively avoid thinking too philosophically, though maybe that’s something to unpack elsewhere. But if you’re like me and believe that watchmaking (especially at the high-end where the sky could and should be the limit at least sometimes) has been a bit too confined to a box, there’s no doubt that the B-Theory accomplishes something striking when it comes to an impactful form and view of what watchmaking can look like (again, or currently, or in the past—however you view time).
The finishing on the B-Theory can be a bit difficult to comprehend. It’s not often that you see titanium parts finished to a high level in the way that brass, gold, or steel can be polished and chamfered. The contrast is achieved through different areas of graining, sandblasting, and yes, high-polished surfaces along edges with tight, angular chamfers. The movement runs at 3Hz and is protected by 30m of water resistance. Friedman is waiting on final specs for power reserve, but he said it consistently runs (as a prototype) for 60+ hours.
The movement was conceived in the abstract by Friedman and made a reality with the help of Fabrice Deschanel, the former head of R&D at Audemars Piguet, who is now at the head of a new company, Artime. The design was helped along by Claude Emmenegger, also at Artime, who designed the AP Concept. The movement is constructed by the team at Vanguart. You also don’t see anything more than what is on the front here, with the rest tucked behind the caseback. But viewed from the back, you can also see how tightly integrated the bracelet is to the case, with a quick-change feature built into the back.
The bracelet and strap system is easy to work with, but unlike most brands that leave the articulation largely to the bracelet, with a hook that goes over a bar or locks into the case, the articulation here is integrated into the case. Not to use gendered terms, but essentially the case has male ends that slot into the female part of the bracelet or strap. Also worth noting that the watch comes either on a strap or a bracelet, though you can take a bracelet version and put it on the strap later.
Let’s try some geometry—a topic I didn’t even attempt to cover in college, so I’m really sticking my neck out. Friedman tells me the watch is 52mm as a curved object. It didn’t feel that long to me, so I did the math to find lug-to-lug across a flat surface (what smarter mathematicians call the “chord”). Factoring in an 18° curve, I found the radius (s/θ = 52/18°×π/180 ≈ 165.52 mm) and then, off that, the “chord” (c=2Rsin(9°)), and it’s actually only 0.21mm thicker at 51.79 mm. That math also revealed something interesting: if the watch followed the same 18° curve, the ideal wrist size would be 16.5cm (or about 6.5 inches). But on my 7.25mm wrist, it didn’t feel like the watch was sitting high up. The bracelet adds flexibility in that regard.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the straps or the other bracelet version on hand when I was photographing. The bracelet—and the entire package—that I had in front of me was a pretty striking and unusual experience. I love a braceleted watch. I love a curved watch. A platinum Cartier Tank Cintrée on bracelet is a top five dream watch for me. And yet, this wears nothing like that. Nor does it wear like a Royal Oak, Nautilus, or anything else I can remember. The bracelet doesn’t necessarily have links in the way you’re used to, where alternating rows connect. It’s a cuff, and simultaneously imposing to look at but thin and light.
What is heavy—with the bona fides, names behind it, technicality, and attention to detail as the justification—is the price. The Pattern Recognition B-Theory Series 1 costs CHF 150,000 on strap and CHF 120,000 on bracelet. The Series 1 is limited to 25 production pieces and 5 prototypes. Friedman’s client roster, however, is deep, and all of the Series 1 watches have sold. From celebrities and musicians to deep-cut independent owners, I know quite a few of the buyers. He said on Talking Watches that he plans to return with a two-tone version and a few other iterations in the future. Or is it in the past? Or maybe they already exist. You get my drift.
For more on the Pattern Recognition B-Theory Series 1, visit the brand’s website.
