Quiet Club Workshop

Sumida City, Tokyo, Early Winter Morning

Lost in Thought

Our relationship with time is often stressful, as we feel pressured by how fast it moves. A clock typically symbolizes this relationship, but we thought it would be interesting and useful to create a watch where the purpose is to help you forget about time, not constrain you to it.

Introducing “Fading Hours”

Introducing Quiet Club’s first model: Fading Hours. Designed, engineered, and handcrafted in our Tokyo workshop. Featuring an alarm-like function with a mechanical gong and hammer, similar to a minute repeater, Fading Hours produces a beautiful sound that aids in entering a state of concentration and gently signals when it’s time to move on. When the alarm function of Fading Hours is activated, we hope the wearer feels liberated from the noise of daily life, allowing time to fade into the background.

The concept for Fading Hours came from a real-life need we encountered daily. Our best work often happens during deep focus, but consistently entering and maintaining this state is difficult. People tend to use the alarm on their mobile phones to stay on schedule, but this meant having a world of distractions constantly within arm’s reach. As watch lovers, we realized that a mechanical watch could solve this problem, but we couldn’t find what we were looking for in the market. This is what set us on the path to design our own watch.

The Movement

The movement is fully designed, engineered, and handcrafted by our Head of Watchmaking, Norifumi Seki, in our Tokyo workshop. Due to the first-of-its-kind nature of the dial gong and vertical hammer complication, very few components could be used off the shelf and the vast majority are designed and manufactured in-house.  

The Dial

In contrast to the highly complicated movement visible on the back of the watch, the dial is designed to appear clean and simple at first glance. However if you dig a layer deeper, the dial houses perhaps the most striking feature of Fading Hours. The dial consists of an outer and inner dial, with the inner dial acting as the gong struck by a vertical hammer from behind, producing the distinctive sound of Fading Hours. The donut-shaped outer dial conceals the outer edges of the inner dial, hiding this intricate mechanism in plain sight. Reflecting the brand's philosophy, the dial is crafted to outwardly demonstrate quiet balance and composition while inwardly embodying strength, complexity, and passion.

The Case

The case is an original design and manufactured by a supplier in Tokyo. Titanium was selected to maximize comfort as it’s lightweight and it doesn’t feel cold on the skin. The caseback is crystal to display the vertical hammer complication as well as the many unique parts that are produced and hand finished in-house.

Fading Hours

Model: QC01

Fading Hours has been carefully designed overall to ensure a daily wearable size, despite housing a highly complicated movement. The watch features a vertically mounted hammer, and a separate set of dedicated alarm hands for setting hours and minutes, hidden behind the traditional time hands when not in use. The watch's 40mm diameter wears smaller on the wrist due to a lug-to-lug measurement of just 44mm, comparable to many 38mm diameter watches. This compact fit is achieved by designing the case in a bowl shape, where the caseback diameter is smaller than the front, allowing the lugs to be tucked in further than in a cylindrical case.

All the images on our site show our first prototype, so things might change slightly.

  • Diameter: 40.3mm*

    Thickness: 12mm*

    Lug to lug: 44mm*

    *Measurements are for our first prototype and subject to change

  • Material: Grade 5 Titanium

    Caseback: See through crystal

    Case front: Crystal with AR coating

  • Materials & Finish: German silver inner dial, hand polished and sandblasted; Pure silver outer dial, heat treated to white

    Markers: Grand Feu enamel inlaid hour and minute markers

    Hands: Polished Zirconium (time hands) and German Silver (alarm hands)

  • Frequency: 2.5Hz

    Power Reserve: 50 hours

    Type: Hand wound

    Complications: Mechanical alarm function, dial gong and vertical hammer, monopusher operation of set/start/cancel functions, rotating bezel to set alarm time, dedicated alarm hour and minute hands that are hidden when not used (rattrapante)

  • Pre-order: June 19th, 2024

    Purchase price: $85,000 USD excluding taxes and shipping costs

    Pre-order deposit: 30% of purchase price ($25,500 USD)

    Initial allocation: 30 units

    Delivery Schedule: 12~36 months from deposit

Price: $85,000 USD excluding taxes

Our Team

Johnny Ting, Head of Design (Left)

Hokuto Uedo, CEO (Middle)

Norifumi Seki, Head of Watchmaking (Right)