Only the Hour
A single-hand watch for a retiring client
The ask
A client who has ordered our newsprint since before I joined is retiring. He ran the night presses at a daily paper, where everything turned on minutes, the last plate and the first truck out. He says he plans to stop checking the time. I'd like to give him a watch anyway, around $2,000.
The gift
A MeisterSinger N° 01 from Münster, the hand-wound original the house was founded on and still makes today. Its one needle-shaped hand circles the dial in twelve hours, and each stroke at the edge is five minutes. A Swiss movement with a 42-hour reserve sits in a 43mm steel case under domed sapphire, on a brown leather strap. It arrives wound and set, with a short card on how to read it.
Why it's extraordinary
Clocks mostly showed only the hour until the pendulum made them accurate enough for a minute hand, which spread from about 1690. After a career run on minutes, he gets the hour first, and the minutes only if he looks closely.
The moment
He wears it on the first weekday with nowhere to be, and the hour is close enough.
A curator replies within one business day.
