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ReviewMovado Museum Classic Collection: A Glance into the History of an Iconic Design

What makes the watch so iconic? Discover the story behind the inception of the Movado Museum Classic at The Watch Guide

Mitrajit Bhattacharya June 13, 2017

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There are watch brands and watch brands, and their numerous product offerings, year after year. Few hit the bull’s eye. And only a handful become iconic enough to last for decades and yet retain the aspiration values. I am talking about one such icon today.

Movado Museum Classic Collection Post-1 — The Movado Museum Classic collection is also available in a two-tone steel & yellow gold PVD bracelet.

Movado Museum Classic Collection Post-2 — The Movado Museum Dial collection houses a design simplicity that is unrivalled in the history of time-keeping.

A Brief History of the Museum Dial:

A wristwatch dial with a plain black face without numerals and a white dot marking the 12 o’clock position, symbolising the sun at high noon, was a design simplicity unrivalled in the history of time-keeping. That is Movado Museum Classic for all. Influenced by the Bauhaus School, the American designer Nathan George Horwitt conceived the legendary uni-dot watch dial. He was a designer of avant-garde quality having designed various famous items which included the Beta chair for the Howell Company in 1930, which was displayed in the famous New York Machine Art exhibit in 1934, along with work by other pioneering industrial designers like Walter Dorwin Teague.

Movado Museum Classic Collection Post-3 — The legendary uni-dot watch dial was conceived by the American designer Nathan George Horwitt who was heavily influenced by the Bauhaus School.

Movado Museum Classic Collection Post- 4 — The Movado Museum Classic collection is a watch that can be worn anywhere, from business meetings to a quiet evening out.

Horwitt designed the stark, black, numberless dial watch in 1947 and interestingly had no takers in the beginning. At that time the idea of having a watch dial with almost no markers was rejected by most watch lovers as a frivolous pursuit of form over functionality. Horwitt’s inspiration for the Bauhaus-style clock dial was to remove as much of the unnecessary elements as possible and focus on the core element of civil time, which is the sun.

Movado Museum Classic Collection Post-5 — The Movado Museum Dial collection is also available in an immaculately designed stainless steel bracelet.

The following year, his design was produced, without credit or compensation, by Zenith Movado. Almost a decade after he first created the design, he was still struggling to make money out of it. In the mid-1950s Horwitt was finally able to get a patent on the design.

In about 1955-1956, Nathan George Horwitt was said to have approached an American company that imported Swiss watches, to get them to produce three timepieces for him with his dial. The three timepieces had their own lives to chart. Horwitt kept one of them for his personal use, the second one was sold to the Brooklyn Museum, while the third was sold to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City in 1959. The sale of these watches to the museums and the subsequent production and display of the clock versions of the same by MoMA is where the “Museum Dial” derives its name from.

Movado Museum Classic Collection Post-6 — There is no doubt that the Movado Museum Classic design will feature in top 10 all time iconic designs by most watch aficionados alongside a Rolex Oyster, Cartier Tank, Hublot Big Bang and TAG Heuer Monaco to name a few.

In 1975, Movado finally settled with Horwitt for $29,000 and after Horwitt’s death, Movado heavily promoted Horwitt and his Classic Museum Watch. Photographer Edward Steichen called Horwitt’s design ‘the only truly original and beautiful one for such an object’.

About the Collection: Museum Classic

The collection includes Museum Classic styles with tone-on-tone black outer rings, on deployment bracelets in solid and two-tone stainless steel, and black leather straps. It also adds new women’s styles featuring diamond markers, and black PVD Museum Sport models with added dial detail on black rubber straps.

Movado Museum Classic Collection Post-7 — The Museum Dial collection is recognised for its iconic Museum dial and modern aesthetic worldwide.

One of the world’s leading watchmakers, Movado Group, Inc. (MGI) designs, manufactures and distributes watches for nine brand names. Movado, the flagship brand within the MGI portfolio, was founded in La Chaux-de-Fonds village in Switzerland in 1881 by a 19-year-old Achille Ditesheim, who set himself up in business with six craftsmen to manufacture watches. He gave his company the name Movado in 1905, choosing a word meaning ‘always in motion’ in the then flourishing international language of Esperanto. It was acquired by the corporation in 1993.

Movado Museum Classic Collection Post-8 — Despite its formal and elegant aesthetics, the Movado Museum Dial timepiece also feels immensely comfortable on the wrist.

Recognised for its iconic Museum dial and modern aesthetic, Movado has earned more than 100 patents and 200 international awards for watch design and time technology. Movado watches are in the permanent collections of museums worldwide.

Movado Museum Classic design will feature in the top 10 all-time iconic designs by most watch aficionados alongside a Rolex Oyster, Cartier Tank, Hublot Big Bang and TAG Heuer Monaco to name a few.