Arnold & Son HM Steel Amber

Arnold & Son has showcased a willingness to step outside of industry norms with unusual dial materials. We’ve seen the brand work with charoite, specular hematite and even meteorite in recent years. Now, Arnold & Son returns to its use of natural materials for dials with the all-new HM Steel Amber.

No surprise here, the star of the show is the timepiece’s dial. Crafted out of Baltic amber, it’s a little-known material for uses in watchmaking. Formed by thousands of years of fossilization of conifer resin, it’s light in color, fragile, yet resilient. Arnold & Son sourced a large 1.6kg block of Baltic amber for the purpose of this project. The exterior of the amber is notably reddish, whereas its interior is a pale yellow – this is where the dial’s exceptional color originates.

This is a high risk endeavor as it wasn’t known in advance how suitable the amber was for dial-making. Fortunately, Arnold & Son was able to extract cylinders from the block of amber and proved to offer enough high-quality and solid specimens to create the HM Steel Amber. No two dials are the same with their unique streaking, this timepiece had to be time-only for the amber to take center stage. Minimalist with a beautiful color, only the center of the dial was drilled to give way for the hour and minute hands.

To echo the density of the dial, Arnold & Son chose one of its most iconic movements. The A&S1001 calibre, like all the house’s movements, is entirely developed, produced, decorated, assembled, adjusted and cased up by the manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

This calibre presents an ultra-thin architecture, with a total thickness limited to 2.7 mm, allowing for a case that is just 7.82 mm deep and 39.5mm diameter. Combined with an oscillation frequency of 3 Hz, it offers a remarkable 90 hours of autonomy. The caseback side of the A&S1001 calibre is also decorated in its entirety. Its surface is adorned with radiating Côtes de Genève stripes that emanate from the balance staff: the nerve centre of the movement. Finally, the corners are lowered and polished, contrasting with the entirely circular-grained mainplate underneath.

The HM Steel Amber is another great example of Arnold & Son’s commitment to exploring rare materials and crafting exceptional dials.