The Freak was to many eyes, at least at first, weird to the point of being offensive. It was, and is, a seven day watch with a revolving movement about whose classification no one could agree; it had, and has, no conventional case, or dial, or hands. (You can see a post by PuristPro’s Marcus Hanke on the production process for the original Freak right here.) The mainspring takes up the entire diameter of the case, and the movement gear train and escapement rotate once every hour and function as the minute hand. It’s true that Ulysse Nardin had already made a name for itself in complicated watchmaking, and would go on to do even more remarkably inventive watches, including exotic astronomical complications like the Moonstruck, and chiming complications like the Sonata, but the Freak, almost 15 years after it first saw the light of day, remains a high water mark for sheer out-of-the-box horological imaginativeness.
Hands-On The Ulysse Nardin FreakLab Boutique Limited Edition
