The term “classic” may well be frequently used but it seems far from having worn out its welcome in an increasingly conservative industry whose buyers are cautiously clinging to their cash tighter than ever. Three years ago, everyone was talking about which watches in which to invest; one good thing to come out of the sharp downturn is a return to sensible language.
Watches should never have been built up as an investment class; they are emotional purchases — investments of the heart, maybe, but not soulless, financial instruments. And so while it is very easy to sell anything remotely scarce in times of optimism, what sells in more pessimistic times, is something that is emotive and eternal.
The Christopher Ward Bel Canto was a phenomenon. Alongside the Space One Tellurium, it is the finest piece of horology available for under £5,000, almost without question. A striking mechanism composed of hand-finished components, proudly presented on an animated dial-side is unbelievable. Not only was it ingenious from a technical perspective, it has somewhat upended the watch buyers’ perception of value at that price point, given Christopher Ward’s renowned transparency in that regard.
When the Bel Canto was released, it sold out instantly. When the second version, a green dialed update to the ice blue original, hit the shelves, it bounced straight off them and onto the wrists of more salivating collectors within two hours. I’d say around half of the serious collectors I’ve met since the model was released have bought one. It is, without a doubt, the most common watch to see on the wrist of watch lovers at events the world over these days. It’s almost a question of “when” you will buy one rather than “if”.
But as much as I thought the value proposition was incredible (almost unbelievable, and, if I’m honest, a little bit scary), I didn’t rush out to buy one myself. Although it was a technical achievement, I felt left a little cold by the crisp blue dial of the first model and mildly underwhelmed by the forest green of the second. It always felt to me like there was more meat left on the bone, that the aesthetics could be pushed a bit further. I won’t pretend to have had the idea of dial texture in mind for the Bel Canto, but when you’re looking to add visual interest to a piece that has absolutely everything else going for it bar that optical spark, it’s a very good place to start.
New C1 Bel Canto Classic
The new Christopher Ward Bel Canto Classic takes all of the ingredients that made the first model a success and dials them up to 11. The changes made to certain components may not be aesthetically apparent and rather more logistically oriented, but are interesting and deserve discussion in a moment. What steals the headlines, however, is the incredible laser-engraved guilloché dial, paired with suitably elegant Roman numerals.
There will be some purists who baulk at the fact these dials are laser engraved rather than hand-guillochéd, especially when one can actually get a genuine guilloché dial on the wrist for around the same money from Atelier Wen.
However, the production numbers speak for themselves. A laser-engraved guilloché dial takes around two hours to finish. That means 12 dials can be produced per day and a staggering 84 per week using just a single automated machine capable of running day and night if programmed correctly. Better still for a company focused on providing not only high quality but also high volume is the extremely low failure rate of laser-engraved guilloché dials. Of course, every now and then, there could be some small flaw in a dial resulting in it being discarded, but by and large, the quality control pass rate using this kind of decoration technique is as close to 100% as you’re likely to find in the watchmaking industry.
In contrast, a hand guilloché dial takes at least six hours of manual work to complete to a sufficient standard. Worse still, those are six hours out of a human worker’s day. Even if said worker worked 12-hour shifts (which for a taxing craft like guilloché would be, if not impossible, strongly inadvisable), and seven-day weeks, they would only be able to produce a maximum of 14 dials a week (and that’s before failures).
Even a high degree of mastery cannot avoid frequent QC failures of hand-guilloché dials. There are so many variables at play. While the specialness of Atelier Wen’s product lies in exactly that fact, a brand of CW’s intended volumes could never have pursued such a road.
That lack of wastage through laser engraving not only saves time and money but also enables a global, in-demand brand like Christopher Ward to predict its production volume more accurately and confidently, which makes the whole supply chain run smoother.
“As a brand whose values are founded upon making high-quality watches accessible to as many people as possible, we knew we had to launch an open series collection in four beautiful new colours…To achieve this, several crucial adaptations had to be made to the supply chain that took us from a maximum monthly production of 50 pieces in November 2022, to 500 in September of 2024.”
That is a remarkable increase in production for a brand that many still refer to as a “micro-brand” (which, in all honesty, is a laughable definition of one of Great Britain’s modern watchmaking success stories), especially given how heavily the early runs of Bel Canto relied of hard-to-find artisanal suppliers, able to work with a brand in Christopher Ward’s price bracket while achieving the exceptional quality for which the Bel Canto is known.
The solution? To make strategic investments in the company’s most crucial to increasing volume while maintaining quality. This could, if this trend continues, be the first step in Christopher Ward buying up more and more of the factories in Switzerland it needs to effectively become a manufacture in its own right.
The model remains 41mm and is still made from grade 5 titanium. The lug-to-lug is a relatively compact 48mm, with a lug width of 22mm. As one would expect for a chiming timepiece, the Classic is water-resistant to 30 meters. The heavily modified automatic caliber, which began life as a humble Sellita SW200-1, bears the reference FS01 and has a power reserve of 38-hours.
The C1 Bel Canto Classic comes in four colours with matching straps, with an increased taper, dropping down to 16mm at the buckle from 22mm at the lugs, as opposed to the 18mm drop of old. The watch retails for £3,495 on a leather strap with a deployant clasp or for £3,745 on a Grade 2 titanium bracelet with an on-the-fly micro-adjust.
