Inspired by antique watches of the 1960’s, this timepiece features a smaller, 35 mm diameter, dome glass and ivory dial. Vintage styled, this sleek and minimalistic watch can be worn by both men and women.

While their minimalistic divers share similar traits to most other divers in the watch world, their chronographs look unbelievably unique, breaking rules and going beyond your expectations. A new boutique watchmaker based in Japan and born in 2005, Minase’s story began as a machining workshop and continued with making watch cases for other brands before making the leap into watchmaking and starting creating their own timepieces. Kuoe is a Japanese brand out of Kyoto, founded in 2020 but conceived nearly 10 years prior. The brand seeks to recapture the elegance and simplicity embodied by watches from the 1940s to 1970s. The brand now has three models, the Old Smith 90-001 and 90-002 (reviewed herein), and the recently released Holborn. None of the models exceeds 35mm, staying true to their vintage inspiration. Kikuchi Nakagawa is another small and independent watchmaker from Japan, a shared vision of two men who started their journey in other disciplines before finding their passion for making watches. The indirect drive seconds hand of the Miyota movement was disconcerting at first, but I've gotten used to it: it "stutters" when the watch is shaken, but that doesn't affect accuracy. The rotor is also noisier than I'm used to, and the sound it makes when the watch is shaken can be a little disconcerting as well. As I expected, the movement is "settling in" and now runs about -3 spd; still quite good so no complaint there. If you do hand-wind the watch, the action is smooth as silk. I've worn it three times now during hard rowing-machine workouts and that, at least, hasn't phased it.

Table of contents

The ‘Old Smith 90-002’ manages to capture a major part of the design language of the MoD specification but then goes beyond that and does something very unique it adds a very Japanese level of detail, craftsmanship and artistry. MoD watches were manufactured by multiple companies, they all had several common design features, most noticiibly the dial and hands, which had to adhere to a set of strict design parameters that produced maximum legibility under all lighting conditions and allowed for the wearer to have an ’at a glance’ comprehension of the time, every time.

Now the Old Smith is not a Netsuke - but the finesse with which all the tiny details of dial & hands, the graceful case architecture, the fit and finish of the watch means that the Old Smith feels as if has the eye of one of those old Netsuke master craftsman has been at work here. There is the possibility to add a ‘sapphire’ crystal which is a nice (but expensive) option, additionally there is a leather strap and a steel bracelet also available. Kurono is a sub-brand of Hajime Asaoka, one of the high end watchmakers based in Japan. You could say that Kurono is the affordable little sister company, using Miyota automatic movements to achieve that.

Sign up to stay up to date!

Future Funk is about the quirky aesthetics, about unique timepieces that look like nothing you’ve seen before. They blend the LED displays of the ’70s with retro futuristic designs, and they do it extremely well. Their watches seem designed with the space explorers in mind, rather than your average earth inhabitant. Their prices also reflect the excellent craftsmanship, meaning that you won’t find anything in their collection priced below a few thousand dollars. At the heart of this watch is the workhorse Seiko NH-35 and all though this movement is not from some exotic Uber brand - it justifiably has a reputation for reliability and longevity (and in my case accuracy + 2 or 3 seconds a day) Having owned the Old Smith for that last week I continually found myself admiring the finesse of its tiny subtle design details that started bringing to mind the traditional Japanese art of ’Netsuke’. Naoya Hida has learned the trade and honed his skills working for the likes of Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, F.P. Journe, and Breguet, before launching his own company in 2019.

Kuoe and the mastermind behind the brand Mr Kenji Uchimura are really one of the first Japanese boutique watch manufacturers. Their pieces aren’t by any means spectacular, but pleasant mechanical timepieces that are characterized by reliability and a beautiful simplicity.Their brand’s purpose is to create the “ideal imaginary watch” by bringing together two contradictory ideas, one being the abstractness of metal that goes beyond its functional and practical aspects, and the other being precisely the practicality of a tool watch. The elegant and perfectly proportioned leaf-style hour and minute hands have a slight crease running longitudinally down the centre, and the simple, lancet-style seconds hand features a lollipop counterweight.

One thing that few watchmakers and Knot does is that it allows their clients to customize their watch as much as possible, choosing a design, case and dial colors from their wide range of watch bodies and pairing it with one of their almost two hundred straps.Thank goodness I had an 18mm strap available. It’s not a popular width, given the larger sizes of modern timepieces. But my loose formula for acceptable lug width is L=[1/2(C)], where L is lug width, and C is case diameter. With a 35mm case diameter, you’re left at 17.5mm, which rounds up to 18mm. (If you want to know what case diameters work with what lug widths, it’s C=2L+/-2; 18mm lugs work well on cases sized from 34mm to 38mm.)