Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood has collaborated with British luxury watch brand Bremont to create The 1947 Collection, a very limited series of unique and individual hand-painted watches.
Ronnie Wood has individually hand painted 47 limited edition watch dials while on tour with the Rolling Stones, a nod to the year he was born, 1947. Each watch in the collection is a one-of-a-kind piece, showcasing original art from Ronnie himself, and housing a special Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier movement with moon phase complication. The exquisitely hand-finished mechanism has been housed in a beautifully designed and engineered 42mm, 18 carat white gold case using Bremont’s signature Trip-Tick® three-piece format.
Ronnie comments, “Having spent so much time focusing on the dial designs, I’m really looking forward to seeing a completed watch. The white gold case will look fantastic with the guitar/’rock on’ type artwork and turning the watch over shows the wonderful mechanism with ‘I feel like painting’ around the edge and my signature on the rotor.
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Memories
“I look at some of the dials and it brings back memories of having painted them on tour in places like Chicago, Seattle, or Philadelphia. In different places I’d get a little time to spend doing some art in between looking after those little twins [his three-year-olds Gracie Jane and Alice Rose] and the music of course.”
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Ronnie is well established as an artist and his work is much sought after by collectors. As his musical career progressed, Ronnie continued his passion for painting and drawing; his subjects ranging from band members and musicians he admired, knew and sometimes played with, to family and close friends – and of course, the self-portrait. It is as natural to find him with a pencil as with a guitar, drawing portraits of contemporaries and finding inspiration from his musical influences.
Ronnie continues, “What’s quite nice is that the dials feel like old friends and together they’re all so different. They look like they’ve been done from all over the world, some with more Chinese and African influences as well as American through to the British countryside. They all have an ‘I feel like painting’ connection or a guitar that’s bent to fit into the dial shape, a horse, a ‘rock on’ or ‘rock hard’ or ‘time rocks on’ kind of message to the wearer so when he looks at the time, he thinks “I better keep rocking”. Painting these dials has been a challenge and I’ve always loved a challenge.
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“I did my first venture with Bremont and the ship’s clock about eight years ago and when Nick and Giles came along to ask me to do some small wristwatch faces, I thought how fantastic, what a challenge. The thing I found initially alluring about Bremont was having seen them incorporate original Spitfire metal into some of their watches, which got me on the hook. The watches are very high quality and artistic so it’s easy for me to be involved.”
Featuring a beautiful Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier movement with Ronnie’s signature on the rotor, each watch is carefully hand-assembled at Bremont’s workshops in Henley-on-Thames.
Bremont Co-Founder, Giles English remarks, “We’ve been extremely fortunate to have worked with Ronnie previously with some of our ship’s clocks and to now be launching a whole collection of watches with him is incredibly special for us, it’s a wonderful progression of our work together to date. Ronnie is a true creative in every sense of the word and seeing his passion for art is utterly infectious. To be able to translate this passion into a series of watches is completely unique, nobody else has ever done anything quite like this before in hand painting so many one-of-one watches. As a collection, the watches sit beautifully together but each have their own distinct character. Having the opportunity to own an original, and wearable, Ronnie Wood artwork is quite something. It’s undoubtedly going to form an important and iconic part of Bremont’s history.”
Bremont Ronnie Wood 1947 Collection details
MOVEMENT Modified calibre 11 1⁄2’’’ based on DTE3022-31 automatic movement fitted with decorated rotor featuring Ronnie Wood’s signature and 28 jewels, Glucydur balance and Anachron balance spring, with Nivaflex 1 mainspring. Rated frequency of 28,800 A/h with 46-hour minimum power reserve. DIAL & HANDS Painted metal dial with blued nickel hands with Super-LumiNova® CRYSTAL Anti-reflective, scratch resistant sapphire crystal. WATER RESISTANCE Water resistant to 10 ATM, 100 metres. STRAP 22mm black alligator strap with white gold pin-buckle. FUNCTIONS Hours, minutes, seconds, day and month at 12H, sub dial date with hand and moon phase at 6H. CASE White gold case in Bremont Trip-Tick® construction. Case diameter 42mm, height 12.8mm, lug width 22mm. CASE BACK White gold case back with integrated flat sapphire crystal featuring ‘I Feel Like Painting’ decoration, 4 white gold screws with polished heads.
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