Full Disclosure:
I (Rob) am a co-owner of Arcanaut and work with the company as its head of brand development. The following is a presentation of our latest collaboration Arcanaut Arc II Liberty Green for Collective Horology that WatchGecko kindly consented to publish to help spread the word about our continued research into new and unusual materials that can be applied to watchmaking.
Over at Arcanaut, we’ve been busy working on the assembly of our Experimentals collection, which includes the Bonehead and Tiger Sh’Arc models announced last year on sketches alone. However, despite working our way through those orders, we’ve continued to develop new concepts and materials behind the scenes. One of the most exciting new composites to come out of the Badger Den, crafted by the hands of our Head of Material Development James Thompson, is a stunning, “verdigris green” copper carbonate dial, created for our retail partners in the USA Collective Horology. This dial has been fitted to the new Arcanaut Arc II — Liberty Green Limited Edition for Collective Horology to celebrate one hundred years of the Statue of Liberty being designated as a national monument.
Arcanaut Arc II — Liberty Green Limited Edition
On October 15 th , 1924, US President Calvin Coolidge elevated the nation’s most famous statue to the status it still holds to this day. Our conversations with Collective surrounding the creation of a limited edition model available exclusively through their online sales platform had been running for almost a year before we settled upon the idea: to create a dial made from the same material as Lady Liberty herself as a nod to Collective Horology’s founders’ hometown, New York City.
Both Gabe Reilly and Asher Rapkin hail from the Big Apple, and grew up with the Statue of Liberty as an ever-present reminder of what the United States stands for. Although we’d wanted to focus our limited edition project on New York rather than Collective’s current home on the West Coast, the idea to use the Statue as the direct inspiration arrived late in the day and wholly by coincidence.
“Originally, we’d discussed doing something with copper but not because of the Statue of Liberty,” explains Anders Brandt, co-founder and chief designer at Arcanaut. “Copper roofs are very common in Manhattan and we initially tried experimenting with aged sheet cooper to achieve a similarly natural patina on a watch dial, but the results, while interesting and something we may revisit in the future, didn’t have that fresh, clean look we were angling for.”
During our research, we watched a documentary about the early days of New York City’s construction. The show touched on the Statue of Liberty’s arrival from France and its erection on Ellis Island, before revealing to us the key date that convinced us to target October 15 th as the perfect moment to release our first retailer collaboration. It also happened to be just a couple of days before the WindUp fair in New York — a fortuitous, almost fatalistic coincidence we couldn’t ignore.
The material used for the dial is an in-house developed composite made from copper carbonate and a UV-resistant binding agent to mimic the verdigris of the statue itself. Around the outside of the CNC-machined dial are twelve LumiCast hour markers, set into the dial to provide depth, visual
interest, and incredible performance when the lights get low.
The one remaining question was what to do with the case back! Since we announced the Experimental pieces last December, we’ve been developing our proprietary “Glowpatch” construction, which sees a deeply engraved aluminium medallion, pad printed and then hand in-filled with high-performance liquid lume for a stunning, glow-in-the-dark seen on the obverse of the watch. Although locating lume on the back of a watch is more than a little whimsical, it is, at its core, very on-brand. We played around with several designs, working on concepts that included Lady Liberty’s face, the skyline of New York, and even the star-shaped base upon which the statue stands.
After many drafts, we settled on an anthropomorphic Flame of Liberty, dynamically streaking across the case back, surrounded by stars in motion. Following our experience with the Experimentals, we chose to increase the useable area of the case back medallion and so relegated all text to the case back frame itself, allowing for a larger and more impactful character.
Behind this closed case back beats the Soprod M100 movement. A 3.6 mm thick Swiss-made automatic, the M100 (the updated but almost identical successor to the A10 used in previous models), has a 28,800 vph operating frequency, and a power reserve of 42 hours.
The Liberty Green is presented in Arcanaut’s classic 40.52 mm ARC II case on a black strap.
For this model, we have chosen the Chevron handset for maximum day- and night-time
legibility. As an added quirk to this special edition model, we’ve employed a green-tinted
anti-reflective coating to the underside of the sapphire crystal for an unusual but cohesive
appearance.
The Arcanaut ARC II — Liberty Green for Collective Horology is exclusively available through Collective Horology. It is limited to 100 pieces in total and is available for pre-order now. The first watches are expected to be ready for dispatch during Q1 2025. There will be a maximum of 100 pieces made and the price is USD 4,400 excluding taxes and including international shipping.
The watches will be available exclusively via the webshop of our US retailer, Collective
Horology which you can visit here.
