Beating As One

The steel cased version of the Armin Strom Mirrored Force Resonance gets in sync with a lower price tag.

- Alvin Wong

Tiny but mighty – that is the message that Armin Strom is sending after the release of the Mirrored Force Resonance last year. The independent marque, which boasts just 25 employees, is better known for artfully crafted skeletonised timepieces bearing in-house movements. With the Mirrored Force Resonance, however, the brand shifts into high-gear, making a leap into the realm of ultra-exclusive complications to woo high-net worth watch aficionados.

“We don’t want to do another tourbillon,” says CEO Michel Serge, who together with technical director Claude Greisler, have helmed the brand since 2006.

And the Mirrored Force Resonance sets the bar very high indeed. The namesake complication, the resonance, is an arduous technical feature attempted by very few. In fact, there are only two wristwatches with resonance made in recent years – F.P. Journe’s Chronometre à Resonance (2000), and Haldiman’s H2 Flying Resonance (2005). Going even further back, 18th century horologist Antide Javier experimented with the system in his double pendulum clocks, while Abraham Louis Breguet employed the mechanism in three of his pocket watches, all of which are prized collectibles today.