H. Moser & The Armoury Reveal Vantablack Endeavor Small Seconds Total Eclipse

The Swiss brand with a self proclaimed sense of humor, H. Moser, have teamed up with the dapper menswear brand, The Armoury to release a pair of limited edition Vantablack clad Endeavor Small Seconds watches. The inspiration for the pair of dramatic watches was the equally dramatic celestial event of a total eclipse, conjuring a fitting visual to the highly polished surfaces meeting the total blackness of the Vantablack dial. The resulting Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse present a unique take on the proprietary material, in ways you probably aren’t expecting.

Vantablack is a brand of super-black coating consisting of dense carbon nanotubes (VANTA = vertically aligned nanotube arrays). Okay, ‘super-black’ might be underselling this stuff. It absorbs nearly all light it encounters, but not violently like a black hole, rather “when light strikes Vantablack, instead of bouncing off, it becomes trapped and is continually deflected amongst the tubes, eventually becoming absorbed and dissipating into heat.” The result is a material coating that will eat up to 99.965% of visible light. The stuff has practical applications within the aerospace sector (think preventing stray light from entering sensitive areas of telescopes), but H. Moser has done one better by applying it to the dial of a watch. Who needs to see those things, anyways?

The Endeavor Total Eclipse is not the first such instance of a Vantablack watch from H. Moser, but it is the first to apply hour markers to the surface of the dial. The material happens to be quite sensitive to encounters with foreign objects, and the application of these hour markers required the development of “a special technique” to be achieved successfully. This technique involved the creation of holes within the Vantablack to reveal the dial plate below. Their inclusion is certainly for the better in this application, if only for practical reasons. Not that Moser has ever let impractical solutions slow them down.

The polished bezel ring under the crystal is meant to mimic the sun’s corona when hidden entirely by the moon, an unforgettable sight when observing a total eclipse. That accent can be had in either steel or red gold, depending on your desired effect. Powering the watch is H. Moser’s handwound HMC 327 manufacture caliber, which makes for a pretty okay view around back as well. 

The steel case measures 38mm in diameter and a scant 9.9mm in thickness, prompting the liberal use of words like “elegance”, “classic tailoring”, “bespoke”, “discreet” and even “exudes elegance to an insider clientele” within the press release, which I felt barely qualified to view as a result. If you count yourself among the lucky ‘insider clientele’ you’ve likely already secured your example, if not, these will be a tough get. However, The Armoury is taking rather unique approach here.

Just 28 examples of each will be built, offered through both H. Moser and The Armoury. Pricing is set at $25,900. If you opt to purchase through The Armoury, you will have until January 26th to place a deposit on the model of your choice. That deposit will grant you entry to their lottery, the winners of which will be contacted on January 27th to complete the purchase, with the deposits of those not selected being refunded in the process. This is a slightly different process that we’ve seen before, and assuming it’s truly random, presents equal odds to all interested parties. Read more about the process from The Armoury.