Ochs and Junior fascinated me right from the beginning. The idea of owning a watch of one of the most important living watch makers and the uncompromised and stringent design mesmerized me, so that I was even looking into buying the «settima junior», a watch intended for children! (It showed the weekdays, which I found – and still find – a nice little complication!) But even the entry level watch was out of my reach, so I just followed their activities from afar.

And then … the Moonphase. With just five (!) additional components – the dial with a special aperture and an epicyclic gearing plus four others – Dr. Oechlsin managed to create a perfect yet poetic Moonphase watch. The accuracy not being the usual 122 years, but 3,478! As of today, to my knowledge, there are only five watches with even more exactness – all of them are more expensive by an order of magnitude.

So what’s so fascinating besides the cool math involved in the complication?

Form Follows Function: these watches are different, but not just to be different »per se», but due to fundamental considerations. For example the case consists of only two parts (not the usual three) and is designed and machined with extreme precision, no movement ring is needed. The unusually short lugs make the watch very comfortable to wear. The date is probably the most striking difference to other watches. There are 31 holes (31 and the 1 have the same position, hence the spiral, not a circle) which also double as 2 minute indexes, whereas the large 10 minute indexes allow orientation for the date too, by marking every 5 days. The orange (in my case) dot in the spiral then shows the date, it’s the 23rd on the picture with the bottle of extremely fine German white wine. It sounds quite complicated here in a written description (by a non native speaker) … it is not only easy in real life, but also better readable from a distance compared to a conventional date display.

Keep It Super Simple: this requires extraordinary ideas and talents, the implementation is then brilliantly simple and reliable; in this case it means one of the most accurate moon-phase displays on the market with only five parts, including no levers, only low-maintenance gearings; for this – and for the date – the dial is used as a constructive element.

Exclusivity: This watch is rarely or never seen, there is no advertising you don’t see to behind any jeweler’s window, nobody recognizes it and there is a very limited second-hand market. I never met a stranger, wearing an Ochs und Junior (unfortunately).

Value: What you buy here is the product of perhaps the most ingenious watchmaker of our time; whatever you read and wherever you look: anyone who gets into watches will eventually stumble upon Ludwig Oechslin and his contribution to watchmaking; in fact, it is of great “value” to me to own one of his works.

Concept: Every detail, from the movement, case, lugs, strap, on the one hand and company philosophy on the other hand is coherent and “in sync” with the other elements. Even the proprietary titanium buckle is designed so that no keepers are necessary.

One other speciality is the fact, that you can configure nearly every aspect of the watch by yourself. I decided on a 42mm case and a design that underpins the Ochs und Junior concept and does without applied colours (although there are some very nice ones available) and luminous material. All surfaces are raw or patinated or milled into the material. Patination can also change colour tones, the sky is patinated in a dark blue, the seconds disc (!; instead of a hand) is patinated in the style of the Nebra sky disc.

To throw a stone into the Zen garden, I chose the date dot in my favourite colour – orange. Possibly the most uncompromised and most ingenious watch out there.