Tissot takes the launch of its RockWatch limited-edition reissue to the top of Europe
For a watch fabricated out of rock, the most fitting place to unveil it is in a space hollowed out of the same rock. That is exactly how Tissot conceptualised its recent launch event for the reissue of the RockWatch, a timepiece that the Swiss brand first introduced in 1985. The charming, offbeat time-only quartz- powered two-handers may have been light on features but they were definitely big on spirit, with cases that were crafted entirely from solid discs of granite harvested from the Swiss cantons of Valais, Ticino and Grisons.
The RockWatch went on to ignite a decade-long adventure through the Alps as well as mountain ranges the world over in a quest for source material for its various iterations, until the model was phased out sometime in the mid-1990s.
Now released as a 999-piece limited edition, the RockWatch of 2025 derived its 38mm granite case from the Jungfrau, a major peak in Switzerland’s Bernese Alps and part of the Oberland Trinity together with the Eiger and the Mönch. (The names of the three summits are popularly interpreted as “maiden”, “ogre” and “monk” – mystical characters essential for fairy-tale magic.)
Each RockWatch case was upcycled from boulders recovered during maintenance work in the tunnels of the Jungfraubahn mountain railway, whose Eigerwand rail station, hollowed out of the Eiger, served as the stage for the RockWatch reissue presentation.
Disused since 2016, to cut travel time to the terminus at the Jungfraujoch glacier saddle, the Eigerwand station was specially reopened and set up with displays of the new RockWatch, samples of granite cylinders and discs to show the steps taken to transform boulders into watch cases, and a visual tour of the material diversity of the RockWatch collection through the 1980s and 1990s, from the original mottled moss-green Alpine granite RockWatches with red and yellow handsets, to ones made from Australian red granite, jadeite, agate, and much more.
The launch event was bookended by experiences that highlighted the exquisite beauty and natural extremes of the Alpine environment, and by extension the RockWatch itself: a start in the resort town of Interlaken, a fashionable destination for royals, artists, the intelligentsia in the 19th century and the Belle Epoque; taking in the view from Jungfraujoch’s Sphinx Terrace outdoor observation deck, 3,571m above sea level, of the Aletsch Glacier, the largest glacier in the Alps and a UNESCO Natural World Heritage site, while battling sub-zero temperatures and howling winds; and shuffling through the haunting Eispalast network of tunnels, carved right through glacial ice.
Hundreds of millions of years, massive pressures, and the unforgiving forces of nature have moulded the RockWatch into an encapsulation of time and space, an enduring symbol of Switzerland itself, and a thing of wonder.