At first, you might not think that a Geneva fine watchmaking brand has very much in common with a Los Angeles tattoo artist. The paths of Roger Dubuis, anchored in the world of haute horlogerie, and Dr Woo, celebrated tattooist, occupy separate yet parallel spheres in the universe of applied art and technology. Upon closer look, however, the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Dr Woo Monotourbillon is perfectly poised at the crossroads of storytelling and artisanal skill, bringing the two names together in a creation of combined talent, disruptive revelation and insider knowledge.
The new Excalibur Dr Woo Monotourbillon is a new collaborative project from the brand, an artist’s reinterpretation of one of Roger Dubuis’s star timepieces. Highlighting the motifs and methods shared by both sides of the partner equation, the Excalibur Dr Woo Monotourbillon features a star on its sapphire crystal dial, tracing the cabalistic journey of a rocket ship travelling across the cosmos — a galactic tableau reproduced on the baseplate and caseback of this 42mm rose-gold watch.
All humans choose their own personal means of expressing what time means to them; some do so with exceptional timepieces that count the seconds, minutes and hours of each day, some mark their lives with inked skin that represents particular milestones in their voyage through time. With the new Roger Dubuis Excalibur Dr Woo Monotourbillon, both these expressive choices coalesce into a single personal companion that embodies the eternal and immutable nature of time and the permanence of a tattoo.
Balancing the weight of these concepts, the calibre RD512SQ is a highly openworked movement of ultra-light mechanics, with its tourbillon cage made of titanium (for the lower cage) and cobalt chrome alloy (for the upper cage). These amagnetic materials provide optimal resistance against the harsh conditions of outer space, while the tourbillon itself — famously created to combat the deleterious effects of gravity upon the regulating organ — is metaphorically liberated by its zero-gravity cosmic backdrop, laser-etched on a black PVD baseplate.
With Dr Woo’s intervention, the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Monotourbillon has entered its next generation of aesthetic design, jettisoning the massive star-shaped movement bridge in favour of a sapphire crystal bridge. The sapphire crystal is decorated with a metalised-gold star emanating from the blasters of a miniature metalised-gold rocket, paying tribute to the historic iconography of the Roger Dubuis Excalibur and acknowledging the model’s relentlessly future-oriented velocity. Reinforcing the exclusive nature of this eight-piece limited edition, a tiny metalised-gold spider is hidden at different places in the watch, a potent symbol that is simultaneously universal in various cultural myths as well as a highly personal talisman for Dr Woo.
Find out more about what lies behind this stunning collaborative timepiece as WorldTempus chats live with Dr Woo next week.
