Hublot and Daniel Arsham Return for the MP-17 Meca-10 Arsham Splash Titanium Sapphire

The watch brand and the artist continue their creative dialogue with a watch that looks like a splash

Hublot’s latest collaboration with Daniel Arsham is less a new watch than a showcase of the unthinkable. The MP-17 Meca-10 Arsham Splash Titanium Sapphire takes Arsham’s penchant for making the now feel like an artefact from another time and turning it into a moment where (when?) a splash is caught midway.

This is Arsham’s sophomore showing with Hublot—the first being the pocket watch, the Arsham Droplet—is the first wristwatch design for the artist. At 42mm the case reads compact, but its dial reveals the expansive complexity of the Meca-10 movement. Organic, rounded lines of the case—feels carved by currents rather than by a lathe—leads into the splash-shaped aperture on the dial. Arsham admits that the shape of the splash was all drawn out and 3D-printed as a sample case. “I had some very crazy shapes, but I also wanted it to be a really durable object that was going to be comfortable to wear.” 

With Hublot’s involvement, of course, materials become integral to Arsham’s vision. Frosted box-shaped sapphire, titanium and rubber come together—the frosted sapphire bezel softens reflections and gives the piece a sculptural translucence; titanium supplies structural integrity and restraint; rubber adds a sleek industrialism to the look.

Sapphire was used in the Arsham Droplet. “That was probably the largest sapphire cuts that they had done up to that point,” Arsham tells us in an interview. “So, I asked what else can we do with sapphire? They gave a small sample of a frosted piece of sapphire that wasn’t supposed to be used for anything.”

Arsham asked if they could use the frosted sapphire and they said, why not? “It’s never been done before,” Arsham adds. “There were a lot of trial and error and experimentation in getting that finish right and it really created this kind of unique form that we haven’t seen before.”

On the hands, numerals, markers, the small seconds at 9 o’clock and the power-reserve indicator at 3 o’clock are the unmistakable Arsham green. The MP-17’s beating heart is Hublot’s in-house Meca-10 manual-winding calibre that’s visible through the splash opening and the sapphire back. Hublot’s trademarks remain: the six H-screws on bezel and back, the distinctive lugs at 3 and 9 o’clock and the titanium H-shaped folding clasp ensure that, despite its fluid language, the watch still speaks Hublot.

As to what Arsham plans for future collabs with Hublot?

“I was at a factory in Switzerland, and it looks like a doctor’s laboratory. Like, you know, an ultra-clean [room]. There were a lot of experimentation within that area and they have a whole area where they keep the errors, the broken pieces; things that didn’t work. Those to me are the most interesting areas to look for ideas: the accidents, the things that didn’t work correctly. Can I take something from those and build off of it?”

A working watch that looks broken? An hourglass with sand running upwards into the upper bulb? The mind wanders but whatever Arsham comes up with, would be something to behold.

MP-17 Meca-10 Arsham Splash Titanium Sapphire