Just when you thought you’d seen it all on the watch front, the brand that makes some of your favorite everyday carry essentials continues to add to its offerings. Portland-based Grovemade is now making your new favorite watch, the Grovemade Black Watch 01, which forgoes a traditional dial design in favor of a circular walnut wood face. This handsome, rugged, and seriously cool take on an everyday watch joins the rest of the brand’s stylish timepiece offerings, which in turn complement the company’s other lifestyle accessories.
Launched back in 2009 by two friends who love great design and even better products, co-founders Joe Mansfield and Ken Tomita quickly hit on something: accessories really make the difference when they’re ridiculously well-made and supremely functional. The Grovemade collection includes everything from desk pads and coasterss to iPhone cases, wallets, knives, and of course, the Grovemade watch collection.
The Black Watch 01 joins well-considered timepieces in the Grovemade family. It’s a non-traditional wood watch, marrying a black stainless steel module with a walnut face, hand-sanded then dyed black with Japanese calligraphy ink. The real kicker comes in the form of the non-traditional dial design; in place of numbers or Roman numerals, you’ll 12 rounded circles.
You tell time by singling out the location of colored orange-and-white circles on the dial as the day progresses. The brand describes it as a “more tactile approach to letting you know where you are in the day.” This sharp dial is finished off with either a black or tan vegetable-tanned leather strap, which should age nicely over time.
The great thing about a watch this distinctive? The number of ways in which you can wear it. While it’s admittedly tough to pull off with a suit, we could see this watch working with everything from a classic white Oxford and blue denim combo to a short-sleeve henley and tan chinos, right on up to a business casual ensemble (say, a navy cotton blazer, a chambray shirt, and gray pants). The key here is to let the watch do the talking — it speaks for itself anyways.
However you chose to wear the Black Watch 01, it’s seriously unlike any watch we’ve ever seen, which fits right in with the Grovemade ethos. Whether you’ve coveted one of the brand’s billfold wallets or envisioned how a walnut monitor stand might upgrade your home office, it’s clear Grovemade has struck the right chord.
