On Displacement and Structure

Hello collector,

It’s been some time since I’ve written to you. Admittedly, life has done a good job of keeping my mind busy and my attention pulled from every direction. Nonetheless, I have been excited about the HN02 release and as each project comes to life, I am forced to think more and more on the evolution of the collection as it evolves and elaborates on the preceding release.

The HN02 did not begin with form. It began with a shift in what my dispositions for a perfect watch were to be. The immediate focus was an intentional reduction of the dial itself so as to 1, continue development for the overall off-centered aesthetic I’d established with the HN01 and 2, to adapt the Classic One’s dressier and more traditional aesthetic into that of the HNxx’s cushion case design.

The guilloche plane on the Classic One is the equivalent of the HN02’s skeletonized brass plates.

The HN02 began with a question I couldn’t ignore - what happens when you simplify the original idea I had when I started this company? Not just visually - structurally.

Off-centered design has existed for centuries. Breguet understood that balance does not require symmetry. But what interested me was not so much the aesthetic (as beautiful as it is) —it was the implication. If the center is no longer fixed, everything else must adapt. With the HN02, I approached displacement as a system rather than a feature.

The hours subdial is not placed off-center—it merely establishes a new point of gravity. Everything around it is forced to respond. The negative space is no longer passive. The case no longer frames the dial neutrally. The entire watch becomes a negotiation between elements that are no longer aligned by default.

The gut-level reaction to such an idea is to finish and decorate the watch almost nonsensically. I wasn’t interested in that as much as I was interested in creating an entirely dynamic architecture of levels and planes that, if isolated, would not cohere. Let me explain -

The anterior of the HN02 is constructed as a sequence of planes—each one carrying a different role, each one reinforcing the displacement. The flinqué enamel subdial sits above a smoked sapphire layer that holds the track, which itself floats over a partially skeletonized and hammered structure, before reaching the exposed movement beneath.

This layering is not ornamental. It creates depth that changes depending on where the eye lands and how the wrist shifts. Displacement, in this case, is not lateral—it’s spatial. The eye doesn’t settle in one place. It moves vertically, diagonally, continuously recalibrating its understanding of the watch and its relationship with light.

Even the case had to be reconsidered to support this.

The original cushion form remained, but it was reduced, refined, and stripped of its earlier weight. At 38mm and <9mm in thickness, the watch sits differently—less like an object asserting itself, more like something resolved and refined. The architectural, brutalist Havid Nagan cushion case made elegant.

The lugs follow the same logic. I moved away from the hooded construction, not as a concession, but as a correction. The watch required a more direct relationship with the wrist—something… less obstructed. The hooded lugs will remain intact on the Origins One project, but more on that in the coming months.

All of these are not separate decisions. They are consequences of the same idea - displacement forcing clarity. I removed my own ability to hide behind symmetry or excess. Every proportion becomes more visible. Every surface carries more responsibility.

HN02 Ember on wrist

Even the finishing reflects this.

Hammered textures, skeletonized structures, and exposed surfaces are not there to demonstrate craft in isolation—they exist to give contrast to the controlled imbalance. Light breaks differently across each layer, reinforcing the separation between elements that would otherwise collapse into one another.

The HN02 not a continuation. It is a refinement through removal. An evolution of what I had in mind when I first began.

Less mass, less fluff, less, less, less.

What was produced is a more refined, more elegant, and coherent thought process.

Breguet, one of my muses, introduced the idea that time could be displayed away from the center. The HN02 asks a different question -

What happens when the entire watch is built around that decision—and nothing is allowed to remain unaffected by it?