This watch was carved from a meteorite that hit Earth a million years ago
CTV
A new watch from design duo Toledano & Chan has been carved from a meteorite that slammed into Earth around one million years ago.
In watchmaking, heritage matters. But while rival European horologists vaunt the traditions of their centuries-old workshops, design duo Toledano & Chan’s new creation has a longer history altogether: It was carved from a meteorite that slammed into Earth around one million years ago.
The Brutalist-inspired watch, dubbed the B/1M, was made from part of the Muonionalusta meteorite, the remains of which were first discovered in the Swedish village of Kitkiöjärvi in 1906. Since then, dozens more fragments — scattered around by the force of its collision with Earth — have been found across northern Scandinavia.
While small amounts of the meteorite have been used on luxury timepieces before, artist Phillip Toledano and watchmaker Alfred Chan wanted to go one step further.
“You often see meteorite dials; they are not uncommon on watches,” Toledano told CNN via Zoom from New York, where he is based. “But an entire meteorite case, dial, lugs — all that stuff — is very unusual.”
The reason may be, at least partly, price. Toledano declined to disclose how much the fragment used for the B/1M cost, but he noted that raw meteorite can sell for more, per gram, than gold. The prototype watch is estimated to fetch between US$8,000 and $16,000 when it appears at the Time for Art auction, organized by Phillips Watches, in New York on Saturday.
“There are no meteorite trees, so it’s deeply expensive to work with,” Toledano said. “And the annoying thing… is that while when you work with gold, if you have bits and pieces left over, you can recycle them for other projects, but with meteorite you can’t.”
Muonionalusta meteorite is made primarily from iron, meaning the duo had to protect their watch with an anti-rust coating. But the material also holds a unique aesthetic quality: distinctive multidirectional striations, known as Widmanstätten patterns, that give it an “otherworldly” appearance that “glitters slightly,” Toledano said.
This year’s hard winter weather likely left significant damage for many homeowners coming into spring. Building and renovation expert Ryan Thompson spoke to CTV’s Your Morning about some of the biggest areas to focus on around the exterior of your home, to help prevent serious damage after the cold, hard winter.
Iranians are managing to get online during the current war with the U.S. and Israel despite drastic censorship and frequent blackouts, throwing the spotlight on to providers of tools such as VPNs (virtual private networks).
March is Nutrition Month, and two Ottawa dietitians joined "CTV Your Morning Ottawa" to mark the occasion and share three sample performance plates for three different levels of activity.
Dozens of models with Down syndrome strutted down a catwalk at a fashion show in Romania’s capital for an evening celebrating style, “atypical beauty” and courage to mark World Down Syndrome Day.
Hawaii suffered its worst flooding in more than 20 years as heavy rains fell on soil already saturated by downpours from a winter storm a week ago, officials said Friday while warning that still more rain was expected during the weekend.
While Canada is well known for its accomplishments in space — including building the robotic arms used on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station — the country still has no ability to launch its own satellites. This week, Ottawa committed nearly a quarter‑billion dollars towards changing that.
March is Liver Health Month, and while many people think about alcohol and diet when it comes to liver health, a growing risk factor is chronic hepatitis B.
It’s an enduring stereotype that Canadians are unfailingly nice, quick to apologize even when they have done nothing wrong. But an online urban legend claims the opposite of Canada’s soldiers, painting a picture of troops so brazen in their brutality that international laws were rewritten to rein them in.
Friday marks the first official day of spring in the northern hemisphere, but it will still feel like winter this weekend for many Canadians, as snow, sleet, rain and sub-zero temperatures are forecast across the country.
A social media post from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week shows a big-eyed macaque staring out from behind bars.
Young people in southeast England and beyond are lining up for the meningitis B vaccine after an outbreak killed two people, sparking supply warnings from pharmacies and raising broader questions about the best public health response to the disease.
Many wage earners are engaging in “microshifting,” a flexible scheduling approach that involves tackling job duties in short, productive bursts instead of a single nine-to-five stretch.
Tyson Atleo, a hereditary leader of the Ahousaht First Nation, says the creation of three new forestry areas to be managed by his community and two others on the west coast of Vancouver Island marks the realization of a long-standing promise.