Seiko Champion

There has been a lot of press this part month from Seiko about the 40th anniversary of their first commercial quartz watch, the Astron.

On Christmas Day 1969, K. Hattori and Co. Ltd (now SEIKO Holdings Corporation) launched the first quartz watch in the world, the SEIKO Quartz Astron. Retailing at 450,000 Yen, the price of a normal sized car at the time, it generated a huge amount of attention worldwide. It came to be seen as the watch of for the new hi-tech age.

I’ve written before about the annual Seiko Power Design Project. This year, the theme is the Astron.




I have to admit I’m disappointed at this year’s project watches. Somehow basing it on the Astron has turned the results into a derivative “commemerative” design project, with no real new technical notes or even new design notes. Bland, disappointing, and not what I’ve come to expect from Seiko. I understand the significance of the event, but to turn the Power Design Project over to it’s recognition subsumes some of the concepts and attractiveness of this annual happening.

This year marks the 8th SEIKO Power Design Project; to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of the quartz watch, the theme chosen for the project this year was “Quartz Astron”. With this exhibition, entitled “ASTRON 40”, 40 watches are displayed; the watches were designed by seven designers based on the original model and arranged according to each designer’s sense of aesthetics. We hope you will feel both the 40 years the quartz watch has opened up and the power of these designers within the rich variety of designs here ・ those that have you feeling the vigorous atmosphere of the time, and those that have been changed with a modern slant to them.

For example, using the dates of the last 40 years as second/minute markers on the dial? Mimicking the watch in pressed paper mache? 60s flower motifs on bands? Cute, but all a little juvenile in design terms compared to what I would have expected.



I’m not sure why this is happening, but perhaps this is too important an anniversary for any of the designers to risk doing something edgy or different, and culturally they are truly wanting this to be an homage to the Astron only. If so, too bad from my perspective, I’ve enjoyed what they’ve done in prior years.