This year I decided to take part in the 36 Days of type challenge held primarily on Instagram. I gave a horological twist to the challenge by turning parts of timepieces into letters. The ten numerals at the end represent some examples of iconic timepiece numerals. The series of drawings was also part of my daily One hour watch project so each drawing took no longer than sixty minutes to complete. You can click on the images to enlarge them.
AB After missing the first day of the challenge, I decided to combine A and B to show ‘Ab’ or the empty point of a German power reserve indicator.
C is for cabochon settings generally found on crowns.
D is for a deployant clasp.
E is for ETA, the maker of many Swiss watch movements. I took the initial letter from their logo.
F is for frequency as seen on an aventurine dial Omega Megaquartz.
G is for the gear train. This arrangement was inspired by the work of Vincent Calabrese.
H is simply for horloge.
I is for index (with a cheeky lume dot to make it lower case).
J is for the jewels used in movements.
K is for keyless works. This is a series of levers and wheels that allows a watch to be wound and set using a crown.
L is for a lever escapement.
M is for a moon phase indicator. One of my favourite complications.
N is for Nato strap.
O is for O-rings, used to help to waterproof watches.
P is for perlage, a functional decoration technique for watch plates.
Q is for a Quartz movement. The movement drawn here is a Grand Seiko 9F83.
R is for the Rolex rehaut. An anti-counterfitting measure which features the logo repeating around the flange or rehaut with each letter lining up with a minute marker.
S is for Seiko serifs. In certain printed applications of the Seiko logo, each serif is given its own mini-serif to retain the appearance of sharp corners.
T is for the tourbillon.
U shown here is from an applied Universal Genève logo.
U (2) is for Urwerk. I retroactively drew this to replace the U on my Horological Alphabet poster as there were too many logos-as-letters already featured.
V shown here is an example of the Vetta logo.
W is for wheels.
X is for the Roman numeral 10, seen here emulating an example of a faceted applique found on some vintage watches.
Y is for the Yema Yachtingraph.
Z is for the zodiac constellations that are found on celestial dials.
0 is from the MING 17.09 Blue.
1 is from old pocket watch subdials.
2 drawn from examples of Weber & Baral dials.
3 from watches made for the Turkish market. Persian numerals were transformed into modular geometric forms on Turkish watches.
4 (IIII) is from the Charles Frodsham Double Impulse Chronometer.
5 is from a Breguet Souscription watch.
6 from the elapsed hours subdial of an Omega Speedmaster.
7 is from a vintage Audemars Piguet 5402 Royal Oak.
8 is from an antique clock
9 is from an exotic dial Rolex 6263 Cosmograph Daytona.
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