Halcyon Origin: Sea & Cliff Watch (The Timepiece or The Art piece?)
This article is not typical watch review but rather written based on my experience of owning and wearing the Halcyon Origin Sea & Cliff watch for weeks. I am going to share the story of "how I come about this watch and using it as owner".
The Project
I have always been checking on Kickstarter for any new watches, since there will be companies making interesting watches with good concept from time to time. When I first discovered about this new watch brand, the reason to participate is pretty simple and straightforward, the love of porcelain and the love of horology. Porcelain has the harmony and tranquil quality, alongside with the minimalistic style enamel painting caught my attention almost immediately.
According to Halcyon Origin, the first 100 watches (even though not numbered at the case back), will be drawn by Sun Dena. Here are the videos from the project -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfNzcpNXFjQ
This YouTube video is interesting in the sense that the technical details of how those porcelain dials are made, and explanation on the difference between enamel, porcelain and zirconia. Another video explaining about the enamel painting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jjyc3L6P5M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgVarQfPQ4I
The Artist
One of highlight for this watch is the enamel painting on the porcelain dial, the main artist is Sun Dena (孙德娜). I have email conversation with Halcyon Origin company regarding this topic since this is another aspect I like about the watch, the collaboration of watch company with the artist.
I won't go into details about Sun Dena, but reader can read about the artist from the following links -
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%AD%99%E5%BE%B7%E5%A8%9C/57165849?fr=aladdin
https://ishare.ifeng.com/c/s/7rmrGXvJvb5
http://en.people.cn/n3/2022/0228/c90000-9963606.html
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1724975100772435678&wfr=spider&for=pc
https://m.thepaper.cn/baijiahao_15950052
Sun Dena lives in Jingdezhen(景德镇), and the town is very important in the history of China Porcelain development.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0930/c90000-9766018.html
The Customer Service Experience
I have participated in this Kickstarter project and the overall experience is great.
The Halcyon service support team is very responsive in answering the questions asked. Though not pro-active enough in handling the delay of delivery but eventually the issue resolved and they apologized for the delay (which is a thumbs up!).
As early Kickstarter participant of Halcyon watch, the company allowed me to select the enamel hand painted dial design, they sent the photos of various dials that have been painted and I can just choose the one based on my preference, eventually I chose the one that you see in the post here.
The Watch Packaging
The main cupboard box is well packaged and shielded with bubble wrap inside a bigger box to reduce shaking and shocking. It also comes with Anti-Magnetic tweezer as gift. The wooden box can then be pulled out from the cupboard box and looks pretty well made.
Opening up the wooden box cover, the Halcyon Sea & Cliff watch is the main show with the protective plastic wrapped. What comes as a surprise is the orange paper note with following greetings -
Dear CSLee
Wish the Halcyon Origin be the crystal clear and bright moon, to accompany you through your life regardless of where you are.
Traditionally, the Enamel (搪瓷；珐琅) has been used and applied on watch dial surface especially on metal base material. If we look at those pocket watches made in early 19 centuries, there were many enamel painting watches made by Swiss watch companies and a lot of them have Roman numeral indices.
The Porcelain dial, undoubtedly taking long time of research and development to make, to be able to create thin layer of dial and drilling a hole to install minute and hour hand without breaking it. According to Halcyon Origin, it takes 76 times' experiments to achieve desirable outcome, through the period of "May 2019 - Oct 2022".
There were two models released by Halcyon Origin in this Kickstarter project, the Sea & Cliff and the Dragon, both have different prices, I won't comment much about the Dragon model since I don't have one. Personally I prefer the Sea & Cliff model because of minimalistic design. The automatic mechanism "Seiko NH-05" is selected to make this watch and I believe the choice is based on the design of the dial since Seiko NH-05 mechanism is rather small and it can be placed off center of the watch, plus it is very good and reliable mechanism.
As for the case design and construction, the sterling silver (925) is used instead of 316L stainless steel. The choice of the case material is winner to me, since silver has the "softness" feel that goes very well with the mirror / translucent character of porcelain dial surface. The rounded silver case serves as the frame of enamel painting.
I like that the crown is located at the 12 O'clock position (on top instead of right side normally). The only draw back to me of course is the crown design on the case. Since the connecting spring bar on the lug with the strap blocks the crown from being pulled up, the owner of the watch needs to remove the quick release strap in order to adjust the time or winding the watch. In my opinion, the crown should be totally hidden from the view, if the stem is shorter and the design of the case can be fine-tuned, then user can pull the crown without removing the quick release strap. I believe the reason why the watch comes with quick release strap is to compensate the drawback of case design.
Come to the dial design, the idea of combining enamel miniature painting and porcelain (瓷) dial to make up the watch is always fascinating. The use of Roman numeral as hour marker is very traditional but in smaller scale on 39mm dial, leaving a lot of white space for enamel painting. The owner of the watch can enjoy clear time telling and also the Sea & Cliff enamel painting all the time so the overall design is well balanced. The back cover is printed with the drawing of Halcyon (神翠鸟) bird symbol, there is another hint to it as halcyon also means peaceful, it also clearly states that the sapphire crystal is installed on this watch.
The User Experience
The watch, after initial winding and running for a more than a week (I never wind again since it is automatic), the watch is now running faster for 2 minutes only after more than a week of usage so this is acceptable rate for me since Seiko NH-05 is known to have daily accuracy rate of -35~+55 seconds. I am not into the scientific calculation and just want to know if the watch is wearable without much adjustment for everyday wear and the precision rate is fine for sure.
As someone who loves art and lived by the sea during my childhood, the Sea & Cliff enamel painting on the watch is definitely mesmerizing and enjoyable to look at. Each enamel painting on the watch dial is different from one another since it is not standard dial print but drawn by the artist freely. The use of negative space is very similar to China ink painting and definitely fits my taste.
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