It travelled 628 million kilometres before reaching Earth, where it waited patiently for 800,000 years to be found. After that, it was another 136 years before it ended its glorious journey on the dial of a Mathey-Tissot.
And if these numbers are enough to make your head spin, they are just an attempt to capture the exceptional nature of this triple encounter: that of a meteorite, an illustrious watchmaker and the watch unveiled today in his honour. This piece, simply named the “Edmond Meteorite”, is a highly prestigious limited edition, newly launched by the watchmaker based in Les Ponts de Martel, in the heart of the Jura mountains, the cradle of Swiss watchmaking.
The “Edmond Meteorite”, produced in a limited series of just 199 pieces, in steel or rose gold plate, is a jewel. First, because it is the first watch with a meteorite dial the maison has ever produced, making it a significant milestone in the watchmaker’s venerable history. And second, because the meteorite in question is not just any space rock. It was discovered in northern Sweden in 1906, more than a century ago. Its name, Muonionalusta, recalls the circumstances of its discovery, 10km from Muonio, a village of 2,300 residents on the border of Sweden and Finland, and the river of the same name.
A very long journey
It arrived on Earth some time between 800,000 and one million years ago. Its landing was anything but soft, since some 40 fragments have been found, some of them 140km north of the Arctic Circle. Its stay on Earth has also been eventful; it endured four ice ages before making its way to the Mathey-Tissot workshops. Muonionalusta is the oldest meteorite of the quaternary period, and has become a favourite of museums and institutes the world over, with fragments dispersed as far apart as Washington D.C. and Berlin, Moscow and Istanbul, Vienna and New York. It’s an interstellar rockstar, whose journey ends today in an original creation by Mathey-Tissot.
All in good time
While the idea was originally conceived almost five years ago, an exceptional meteorite had to be found to bring the project to fruition. Bringing a million-year-old rock to life as part of an artisanal product designed to measure is a highly symbolic, even philosophical, undertaking.
It’s a fusion of natural elements, a metaphor for time and permanence, and also a novel approach to materials. The Muonionalusta meteorite is made up of 91.5% steel and 8.5% nickel. For the purposes of coherence, but also of authenticity, Mathey-Tissot chose to produce a first limited series in steel, creating perfect harmony between the dial and the case. But to celebrate the historic and exceptional character of this union through the ages, a second limited edition with a rose-gold-plated case is also available.
Shades of grey… and gold
The model chosen to bring this original creation to life had to be an Edmond automatic, from Mathey-Tissot’s iconic collection named after Edmond Mathey-Tissot, who founded the firm in 1886. This decision symbolises permanence, continuity and the passing of time, for both the watchmaker and the meteorite. Both, on their own time scale, have weathered centuries of adverse conditions to end up where they are today.
Simple and elegant, with a diameter of 42mm, the first model in steel highlights the dark charcoal grey of the meteorite dial, framed by a grey flange and a strap in charcoal grey Italian leather. In a nod to the unique geometrical patterns and reflections on the extraterrestrial steel of the dial, Mathey-Tissot has placed a guilloché date counter at 6 o’clock. One is sculpted by space, the other by a human hand.
The second model leans in to the warm tones of rose gold, focusing on the contrast between the meteorite centre and its horological exterior: the three hands, hour markers and Mathey-Tissot signature light up with a warm lustre that illuminates the deep, mysterious grey of a meteorite that has travelled through space, to end up measuring time.
