In recent years, everyone coming to the fairs always had one piece they had to see: the latest in Harry Winston’s Opus series. This year, there was no hint prior to the fair about the fate of the Opus series, especially now that the man who started this remarkable series for the jeweler, the peerless Max Busser, had left to do his own thing.

Last year’s Andreas Strehler novelty was perhaps the best looking watch in the entire series but it was a bit like foie gras, too subtle and too thin for most. Harry Winston went for ossobucco with the Opus 8 and it leaves one stuffed to the gills.

Take a look at the picture provided by Harry Winston and you will quickly realize that, if nothing else, the watch makes for a wonderful conversation piece. How exactly did creator and technomancer Frederic Garinaud achieve this particular rendition of the digital display of time? We will return to this subject in due course but first, a few basic details.

The watch provides hours and minutes, with day/night indicators, on both the front and back, but both minute displays are limited to showing time to the nearest five-minute mark. Unless activated by the all-or-nothing minute repeater-like slider, the time remains hidden from view.

Limited to 50 pieces, the 45mmX34mm watch is available exclusively in white gold and is styled after the digital watches of the 1970s that very nearly put the mechanical watch in its grave. That the look and feel of such a watch should return in a momentous salute to mechanical chronometry is an irony worthy of Goethe.