CORUM has teamed up with Label Noir in a new collaboration to manufacture a unique timepiece dedicated to the renowned Macau Master of Time Event. By partnering with Label Noir, the Swiss watchmaking company, located in La Chaux-de-Fonds, has given carte blanche to Label Noir's creative team, which specializes in bespoke timepiece customization
The Bubble collection, and more specifically the emblematic CORUM Bubble 47 Central Tourbillon model, has been enhanced with the most distinctive features of the Geneva-based customization brand: black, acid green, textured finishes, and grey and matte tones, in order to highlight its deeply contemporary essence.
The fruit of their collaboration is an unmistakably Corum watch loaded with signatures, symbols, and stories.
In the year 2000, CORUM introduced the Bubble, an oversized wristwatch with a domed sapphire crystal. A design so radical that the timepiece has become a must-have for the new millennium. It bridges the gap between two universes, watchmaking, and pop culture.
The Bubble Collection was Severin Wunderman's rendition of his own vision of creativity. The entrepreneur had just acquired Corum when he launched the Bubble. At that time, he was inspired by a highly technical and experimental diving watch, able to withstand enormous pressure, which was topped with a thick glass dome.Severin Wunderman took this inspiration and translated it into the iconic Bubble, a generous 47 mm diameter theater stage. The Bubble is now an arena for artistic experimentation, a lounge where Corum hosts its proms and invites other performers, graphic designers, and artists to collaborate, contributing their creativity and artistic talent to bring a new level of avant-garde designs to the brand.
Label Noir has applied all its expertise in colors and finishes to emphasize, in its own way, how to read time and make the Bubble a monument of contemporary watchmaking. The idea sounds simple enough, however, the resulting effect is powerful and impressive. All the more so since the model chosen for this collaborative venture is a Corum milestone piece, an obvious creation, a purely technical piece of fine watchmaking, featuring an (almost) traditional complication: the Bubble Central Tourbillon.
An almost conventional complication, in fact, because this tourbillon, which features traditional architecture, has been freed from the periphery of the dial to its center. This sidestep turns the whole architecture of the movement and the display upside down: everything is reversed, from the mechanical show in the center which is amplified by the Bubble's dome, to the display - no hands, just indicators - around the edges.
Several versions of this central tourbillon have already been produced in various materials, with the aim of anchoring this watchmaking ‘spacecraft’ into traditional haute horlogerie’s world while playing with opposites, such as steel and blue, gold and black.
Label Noir went for a different approach. Very graphic finishes, deceptively minimalist, because the play of nuances is complex, with anthracite and silvery hues, matte finishes, bracelet (matte textured black rubber), case (grade 5 titanium treated with black ADLC), bezel (grade 5 titanium coated with satin black ADLC), right down to the plate. No longer an assembly of different parts, this watch is a whole: one continuous thought process with a bubble on top.
A few more dashes of steel enhance the dial pattern, numerals, and display discs, and refocus the eyes on the central body, the beating heart, the tourbillon.
Finally, what must be read is highlighted with a few strokes of contrasting color: acid green, Label Noir's signature, is added to the hour-minute indicators, the dual mark, and the strap stitching.
