Editors' Picks: Our Favorite Watches From The TimeForArt 2024 Auction

With its inaugural auction in 2022 raising $1.2 million in support of contemporary art, the Swiss Institute will have its second edition of the TimeForArt auction as part of The Phillips New York Watch Auction: XI at Phillips on December 7, 2024. Much like the Only Watch charity, TimeForArt will be auctioning off 25 unique pieces from watch brands, many of whom have partnered with “world-renowned artisans," or feature "interventions by leading contemporary artists, or bespoke examples of innovative craftsmanship.” The participating brands for the 2024 edition are Anoma, Armin Strom, Baltic, Biver, Breitling, Bulgari, Carl F. Bucherer x Hodinkee, Chanel, Chopard, Czapek, Dennison, Furlan Marri, HYT, Louis Erard, Massena LAB x Raúl Pagès, Maurice Lacroix, Perrelet, Reservoir, Ressence, Reuge x ECAL, Sartory-Billard, Speake-Marin, Toledano & Chan, Unimatic, and Zenith.

Naturally, the team here at Teddy had a lot of opinions, so we figured we would each pick our favorite watch from the auction. And we are sure you all have your own opinions as well, so definitely hit the comments with your favorite watch from this worthy auction. Now without further ado, let's get into our editors' picks for our favorite watches from TimeForArt 2024.

Danny Milton: Unimatic Modello Tre Automatic Chronograph U3S-TFA

Unimatic might just have had the most Unimatic approach to TimeForArt possible. Where so many brands took the brief to mean "go crazy," Unimatic instead kept things as toolish as ever by introducing its first-ever automatic chronograph watch, the Modello Tre Automatic Chronograph U3S-TFA. Empty bezel with a circular pip? Check. Textured black dial? Check. Clean minimalist dual-register display? Yep. Add all of this to an industrially-forward steel bracelet and you get the brand's – well – industrial take on what it means to showcase a watch as a piece of art. It is always amazing to see a brand delve into new complicated territory while maintaining its design ethos, but the U3S-TFA is just that. Maybe it's just the fact that Unimatic is showing this watch at TimeForArt, but it really does have a sculptural, art-like quality to it that goes farther than being a mere chronograph. I am probably drinking the Kool-Aid, but whatever — this is my pick of the show. 

Bilal Khan: Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 XP TimeForArt Edition

There is something about taking a remarkably difficult technique like marquetry and applying it to a material with not much intrinsic value to it. Rather than stones, wood, or enamel, Chopard chose to do a straw marquetry dial on its Alpine Eagle 41 XP for TimeForArt. While this is a first for Chopard, it has been done in the past, notably by Cartier. It starts with rye straw grown in Burgundy, France, which is then individually split by hand and then flattened using a tool called a plioir. Then, the straw is cut using a scalpel and glued onto the dial in order to create the pattern.

This is a painstaking process with a lot of room for error but the end result is beautiful and meant to evoke an eagle’s-eye view of the skyscrapers of New York City. Once the pattern is complete, the dial is coated with wood wax to achieve that brilliant finish. All this takes 60 hours to complete, with the end result being an absolutely breathtaking display of true craftsmanship.

Mark Bernardo: Maurice Lacroix MASTERPIECE SKELETON "With what eyes ?" by Rodrigo Hernández

Maurice Lacroix is no newbie when it comes to collaborations with artists; the Swiss brand has previously partnered with French architect Jean Nouvel, Belgian fashion designer Kris Van Assche, and Thai street artist Benzilla, among others, for special editions of its various watch models. For the unique piece it has contributed to the second TimeForArt benefit auction, Maurice Lacroix has offered up its elegantly avant-garde Masterpiece Skeleton watch as a blank canvas for multi-award-winning Mexican sculptor Rodrigo Hernandez, who has re-created in stunning miniature an installation currently hosted at San Francisco’s Wattis Institute depicting two monkeys staring at each other. “With What Eyes?” is the name for both the original work, created in hammered stainless steel, and the one-of-a-kind timepiece, which portrays the sculpted monkeys’ heads in polished bronze and overlays them atop Maurice Lacroix’s signature Masterpiece Skeleton dial, underpinned by the manual-winding Caliber ML134.

Inspired by a quote by the Greek poet Sappho, and a question posed by Mexican philosopher David M. Peña-Guzman on the nature of dreaming, Hernandez intended “With What Eyes?” as a philosophical meditation on the conscious experiences of animals other than humans, using monkeys, humans’ closest evolutionary cousins, as symbols. Contained within and framed by a 43mm bronze case, the handcrafted “horological sculpture” of the monkeys’ heads in profile dominates the openworked dial, with tantalizing glimpses of the movement visible between and behind them, including the hour wheel on full display behind the hour and minute hand, and the plates and bridges with their golden sandblasted finish that plays off the gleaming bronze of the heads. Hernandez’s signature appears as an engraving on the case middle at 9 o’clock, while other movement elements, including the three-quarter mainplate that anchors the caliber’s skeletonized structure, are visible via another sapphire window in the back of the case. The watch is mounted on an unusual hand-braided leather strap and fastens to the wrist with a buckle made of the same bronze as the case.

Of course, that last detail begs the question as to whether anyone would choose to actually wear this unusual and very exclusive timepiece rather than store it in a case after acquiring it at auction. And therein perhaps lay my reason for choosing to spotlight this watch over the many other worthy contenders in the TimeForArt 2024 collection: I would wear it, and proudly, because not only is it a wonderful conversation piece but also, why purchase a bronze watch, even a one-of-a-kind model, if you’re not going to put some patina on it?

Blake Buettner: Furlan Marri Disco Stromatolite (Unique Piece for TimeForArt 2024)

Furlan Marri is a young Swiss brand that’s managed to make a huge impression in just a few short years. Its founders have achieved this with a design language that feels fully mature right out of the gates thanks to a keen eye for the details, and a willingness to go the extra mile. I’ll cite Furlan Marri's Only Watch creation as a perfect example of this, and why you should be excited about the future of this brand. Most recently, Furlan Marri released the Disco Volante, reviving art deco iconography in the process, and in benefit of the Time For Art auction, the brand has created a piece unique boasting a red Stromatolite stone dial. The brilliant red dial is a single piece, doing away with the multi-piece structure of the base watch to prioritize the view of the stone itself. Inside resides the same Peseux 7001 manually wound caliber, with custom bridges visible through the back. Pre-auction estimates place this watch between $3,000 and $6,000, making it a potentially accessible lot among some seriously impressive offerings.

Erin Wilborn: Ressence TYPE 1²v2 SHA

Though Ressence might be best known for its sleekly designed, unconventional timepieces, it must be noted that a key element of the brand’s ethos is a playful approach to timekeeping. Each piece tells time through a mechanism of concentrically rotating disks that glide across the dial in a dance that I have always viewed as quite whimsical. The brand’s take on minimalism hasn’t read as sterile to me because of that sense of whimsy, but rather, an expression of an optimistic view of the future. This blend of playfulness, whimsy, and optimism inherent in the design of the Type 1²v2 makes for a worthy – albeit surprising – canvas for multidisciplinary artist Shantell Martin to inscribe her signature looping continuous lines across. And, the illustration is not by print, but by black permanent marker. 

TYPE 1²v2 SHA features a landscape done in Martin’s free-flowing, fluid line, creating landscapes, birds, and even a mountain with a smirk (or is it a smile?) not unlike the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic expression rendered in cartoonish form. The script on the dial you’ll find are the words “Enjoy Life” which have been printed at the top and bottom of the dial. But once the watch is set into motion, terms like top and bottom become obsolete as the entire drawing sets off into jumbled, Picasso-esque chaos. This is intended to be something of a meditation on spontaneity; I will admit I have no clue how anyone will ever tell the time on this thing, but I don’t fail to see the humor in all of it. For me, that’s part of (if not all) the fun. This piece might not be as intricately complex in terms of manufacturing as some of the other watches in the auction, but it does seem fitting to partner with a rather young contemporary artist for something like TimeForArt, whose express mission is to invest in the future of artists. 

D.C. Hannay: Toledano & Chan B/1M

Art provocateur, iconoclastic car enthusiast, and self-described geezer Phil Toledano is at it again, along with his design partner, Alfred Chan. The pair released the outré integrated B/1 last year, to great acclaim and instant sellout status, and now, they’ve created a new version, a one-off to benefit TimeForArt, and it’s even more visually arresting than before. This isn’t the first pièce unique for the brand: a previous one-of-one rendered in copper-infused carbon sold for twice the auction estimate this past year at a UNICEF benefit, but the latest iteration of the B/1 is truly out of this world, if you’ll pardon the expression. 

The B/1M edition-of-one is constructed of meteorite, 904L stainless steel, and titanium, with its meteorite dial protected by a sapphire crystal. Said chunk of space treasure is from what’s believed to be one the oldest known meteorites to strike Earth, the Muonionalusta meteorite, a rock much older than when it first slammed into the Scandinavian terra firma around a million years ago. The meteorite is known for its especially attractive etch patterns, fully evidenced by the gorgeously random striations that play hide-and-seek with the light. The meteorite comprises the outer case, with its Brutalist angles echoing the renowned window of the Marcel Breuer Whitney Museum in Midtown Manhattan. 

The B/1M retains the destro crown and "broken katana blade" hour hand of the original lapis-dialed B/1, but forgoes a bracelet for an exotic ostrich leather strap, done up in complementary shades of black and gray. Like the original, there’s a Sellita under the hood, but as before, design rules the day here, and the watch world is all the better for it. The monochromatic vibe lends a look that’s equally comfortable in casual or more formal settings, but however it’s dressed up or down, make no mistake, this is a piece of wrist-borne art — one as hot as a meteor entering, say, Earth’s atmosphere. And given the heat that the Toledano & Chan aesthetic radiates among the watch cognoscenti these days, you can expect a rather explosive auction result.

TimeForArt 2024 will take place in New York City on December 7, 2024 and you can learn more about the auction as well as the other watches at timeforart.ch