Skeleton Watches

From AP skeleton watches to Cartier, Bvlgari and Hublot, there’s a skeleton watch for every style and occasion.

What is a Skeleton Watch?

A skeleton watch (also known as an “openwork” or “skeleton dial watch”) is a watch with a transparent dial that exposes its movement (inner workings).

Skeleton watches commonly have fully transparent dials, but there are also partial or semi-skeletonized watch dials, which feature a only window into a watch’s movement.

From a watchmaking perspective, exposing the movement of a watch provides much more surface area for art and design, and skeleton watches are prized for their intricate, highly-embellished movements.

The History of Skeleton Watches

Nowadays fairly common, a skeleton dial watch was once very rare, involving extreme craftsmanship: it was a technique that stood between mechanical skills and artistic décor.

Highly decorated watch movements have been around since at least the 1800’s. Notably, pocket watches coming from the Germany’s Black Forest near the Swiss border included very peculiar decorations on their top bridges. On the outside, these were very plain watches — unembellished and in line with modest Calvinist design cues. But once the inner lid of the case was opened, their true nature was exposed.

The upper bridges were worked in bas-relief, showing rustic scenes, panoramas, trees, flowers and human figures, which proposed visions almost dreamlike and hidden, reserved for the very few who could have access to such an intimate, private place.

Removing metal from the bridge so to better style the images was a consequence of the pursuit of beauty. And in time, this act of subtraction became ever more intense as to reach the levels of today, almost an art in itself.

The first industrially-made skeleton watch

Audemars Piguet’s archives speak of a model from 1928, which was the first skeleton watch ever made industrially by a watch company. At this time, however, skeleton watches were mostly commissioned by wealthy people who liked the idea of watching the inner mechanics of the movement at work. It was only after the Quartz crisis that the idea of really skeletonizing caught on.

Read more: The History of Audemars Piguet

1970’s – 1990’s: the skeleton watch boom

From the 1970’s, for about twenty years, the popularity of skeletonized watches soared. Combining meticulous handcrafted work and intricate designs resulted in watches with a steam-punkish mood and on-point for an industry then trying to reinvent itself.

One of the first interpreters of this trend was Armin Strom, who in 1984, launched his first skeletonized watch at Baselworld. His début inspired a nouvelle vague of watchmakers which took the craft of skeletonization to new levels, applying their trade to complete watches made by other companies and obtaining a sort of unique masterpieces.

Modern Skeleton Watches

The skeleton watch trend continues to this day and has been recently reinvigorated by the arrival on the scene of haute horology by Richard Mille.

Richard Mille did away with the traditional baseplate and bridge architecture invented by Lepine in the 1760s which had characterized the skeleton watch in modern times. Instead, he opted for creating movements which had the minimal amount of metal to house all the elements of a working mechanical timepiece. Describing the design thinking behind this radical approach, Richard Mille said,

“In the first place it is my passion for racing cars and aircrafts that guided this approach. I am totally fascinated by what is under the hood, and seeing how everything works; this was also why from the very beginning I used open worked movement designs. Also, today, nearly everyone is – consciously or unconsciously – technically orientated.”

– Richard Mille

And just to turn back to the origins of the skeletonized approach, he added:

“Perhaps you could say that I took the ‘fear’ or prudery out of the naked movement issue. Now, everyone feels free to try this design ethic.”

– Richard Mille

The story of the latter years shows that Mr. Mille is pretty right.

Nowadays, almost every watch manufacturer has some pretty lovely skeleton watches in its lineup.

Skeleton watch design

The current trend in skeleton dial design leans towards elegant, old-styled movement decoration with traditional motifs. These layered and very industrial-looking skeleton movements contain highly stylized black and grey anodized bridges, and rely on the interplay of grained, brushed, glossy and matte textures to provide a three-dimensional look. This contrast in texture and finish makes the the gears and components of the mechanism play together in their perpetual movement.

Although not everyone’s cup of tea, it should be said that the development of this industrially-looking design trend has benefitted mostly thin and ultra-thin watch manufacturers like Bvlgari and Piaget, which present collections of sultry-looking luxury skeleton watches with lots of character.