Based out of Philly, the Analog Watch Company is no stranger to making watches out of unconventional materials. After starting off with wood watches, founder Lorenzo Buffa started getting worried about being known as "that wood watch company," so he started branching out. The company's last watch, the Ant Watch, was an ant farm for your wrist, complete with five living ants behind the crystal. Its latest watch, though, is a little classier: called the Mason Watch, it features a dial and case milled from solid marble.
The Analog Watch Company likens the Mason to a time-telling sculpture slash conversation starter on your wrist. Available in both white and black marble, the Mason comes in two shapes: circular and hexagonal. You'd think a hunk of marble on your wrist would be relatively heavy, but the Mason only weighs two ounces, which is less than the stainless steel Apple Watch. Even the dial is made of real marble, which posed some engineering challenges. "Dials are usually super thin, and have patterns silk-screened or painted onto them," Buffa tells me in a phone interview. "But marble, you can't really make it paper thin. So we had to work hard to find pieces of marble that were already cut to just a couple millimeters thick."
But why marble at all? "Marble is just so hot right now," Buffa laughs. "It was really fashionable in the Gatsby era, then again in the 1950's and the 1960's, and now again today." Buffa says marble's most appealing quality is it's uniqueness. Formed over eons, each piece of marble swirls with distinctive calcium deposits, exclusive to itself.
"It's a natural material, and if you want to get higher-level about it, that kind of material brings us closer to our own relationship with the natural world. And because each piece has personality, you can build a stronger relationship with marble than steel or plastic," says Buffa.
The Mason Watch is now available for pre-order on Kickstarter, starting at $180. Hey, if marble was good enough for the wrist of Michelangelo's David, it's good enough for yours.