The new Arnold & Son HM Steel Amber

In watchmaking, like in fashion, trends come and go. We have seen a surge of green dials a few years ago, dozens of watches playing on the 1970s vibe with integrated bracelet or vintage re-editions of entire past catalogues. This year, aside from a certain appeal for pink and purple dials, the watch industry seems to have a renewed love affair with stones… Something that was in high fashion during the 1980s, then almost fell into oblivion and is, since last year, en vogue again – so much that we used the trend for some predictions. The latest brand to jump on the bandwagon is Arnold & Son, bringing a minimalistic watch that leaves all the space available for the stone to express itself. Meet the HM Steel Amber.

Nature can be pretty fantastic and sometimes particularly creative… Take stones such as tiger eye, malachite, jade or agate, all having incredible patterns and vibrant colours. Hard stones, or semi-precious stones – not to be confused with gemstones like diamond or sapphire – have long been used in jewellery, watchmaking and decorative arts, for them to offer these rich colours and geometric patterns. But when it comes to watches, these stones, while highly popular for a period of time, became quite gaudy and not necessarily well-perceived in an era of sports or minimalistic watches. Except that they are coming back!

The latest creation of Arnold & Son, the HM Steel Amber, relies on an organic mineral known as amber, which is fossilized tree resin (kids of the 1990s who have seen Jurassic Park will all see what it means…) Worked as a gemstone since antiquity, amber can take multiple colours and opacities. The stone in question here is Baltic amber, a stone that’s light, almost laminated, fragile yet resilient. The colour changes on contact with air and light, bordering on a brownish red at the surface. The heart, however, shows pale yellow hues and a soft, almost milky graduation of colours. Arnold & Son and its dial partners settled on a block weighing 1.6 kilograms, fossilised more than 30 million years ago. Cylinders were extracted from the block, cut and then inspected. And, like always with these natural materials, no two dials will be identical.

In order to focus the attention on the dial, Arnold & Son elected its simplest watch for the occasion. The HM Steel Amber, as its name suggests, is a time-only (minutes and hours) watch with a sleek design and a thin profile. The case, made of polished steel, measures 39.50mm in diameter and only 7.82mm in thickness. The rest of the dial is kept as clean as possible, with only dots to mark the minutes and two blued steel sword hands to indicate the time.

Under the sapphire back is the in-house Calibre A&S1001, a movement that we have seen on multiple occasions with or without complications. In this HM form, it’s only 2.70mm in thickness but still packs a solid 90-hour power reserve. The back reveals an elegant decoration, with Geneva stripes radiating from the balance wheel, chamfered edges, blued screws and nicely designed bridges.

The Arnold & Son HM Steel Amber pairs its vibrant dial with an imperial green alligator strap, and a bold papaya-yellow alligator leather lining reminiscent of the dial. A limited edition of 38 pieces, it retails for CHF 19,500 (incl. taxes). For more details, please visit arnoldandson.com.