2017: A round up of the year
2017, what a year.
As well as having the treat of working with some fantastic artists and designers, we also celebrated our tenth birthday last year! Yep, ten years of Mr Jones Watches!
So if you’ve just joined us, or fancy a little reminder, here’s how 2017 looked in the world of unconventional watch making…
We had a wonderful start to the year, we worked with Verre Églomisé artist Marion Labbez on a new watch design, Nuage.
Marion is an expert in the art of gilding precious metals and she trained our team on the technique so we could use it again for future designs.
Marion teaching our print technician Paul Wardski the gilding technique.
Gilding the Nuage watch in our London studio.
Next was Blowball. This watch was originally designed by Fanny Shorter as a limited edition piece back in 2013.
We decided to re-issue it, in our new and improved ladies watch case and we were really pleased with the results.
The Blowball watch designed by Fanny Shorter.
April saw our first collaboration with the talented illustrator Vic Lee for the design of Fantastic Exploits.
This watch is beautifully illustrated and to add to the beauty of it, the seconds hand doubles as a kaleidoscope that is constantly changing shape before your eyes.
See a video of the watch in action below.
Vic Lee in his studio.
We then worked with Edward Monaghan to re-design our existing skull watches.
Edward created a pair of unique watches in his own artistic style: the psychedelic Last Bloom and the three-dimensional Vanishing Point, both limited to just 100 pieces each.
The Last Bloom (left) and Vanishing Point (right)
In June we released the Promise of Happiness watch.
This hand-painted tiger watch was designed by artist and illustrator, Fanny Shorter.
We sold out of the limited edition watches pretty fast, so we spent time developing the design before we added it to our permanent collection of London made watches.
You can read about the development process here.
The limited edition Promise of Happiness watch with original miniature painting.
In the summer we celebrated ten years of Mr Jones Watches by holding a small design exhibition in the gallery space below our shop in Oxo Tower Wharf.
During the event, visitors were invited to meet the team and get involved in the printing and making of the watches.
See what we got up to here.
This was the view of the exhibition from outside (that’s Dove, assembling watches).
Using the gilding techniques we’d learnt from Marion earlier in the year, we created a special variation of our famous skull watch, the Gilded Skull.
Our small production team crafted this watch by hand, using 22 carat gold leaf and palladium.
The Gilded Skull watch.
October saw a second collaboration with Edward Monaghan for the creation of our most artistic watch of 2017, Chaos Window.
This watch was designed as a piece of wearable artwork. We wanted to keep it as exclusive as possible, so the watch was limited to just 50 pieces (all have now sold out).
In October we were excited to welcome two lovely new people to our Oxo shop team, Lily (weekdays) and Cherry (weekends).
Lily (left) and Cherry (right)
Question 18 was the design for November. This unusual watch was designed by Crispin (Mr Jones) and was inspired by one of his artistic heroes, David Smith.
Each time the hands align on the dial of the watch, it reads ‘leave the past behind, now is your time’. The perfect watch for a new year, don’t you think?
In December, we had the pleasure of exhibiting at the super cool ‘Gentleman’s Grooming and Lifestyle Show’ in Tobacco Docks.
The show was a one-day event, aimed at fashion-conscious men in London. We met some really interesting people there!
Our display at the Gentleman’s Grooming Show.
After spending the year developing a new, bigger, 45mm case for our watches, we were excited to announce the release of our first XL watches in December.
We’re planning to add some new designs to the XL case in 2018. You can see our existing XL collection here.
Our final watch of 2017 was a special one for the Mr Jones Watches team.
The vibrant Wanderlust watch was designed by our (one and only) print technician, Paul Wardski.
In his own time, Paul is a well-established print artists, so we were very excited to be working with him on a watch that he had designed himself.
Wanderlust, designed by Paul Wardski.
We had some real highlights last year and we’re excited to be planning for 2018.
Here’s to another year of unconventional design and standing out from the crowd!
Did you make it to our birthday exhibition? What was your Mr Jones highlight this year? Let’s chat in the comments section below…