Close Up: Harry Winston Opus 3

The Opus 3 piece can safely be called a labor of love, considering it took Harry Winston seven years to complete! The Opus 3 – originally launched in 2003, the third in the Opus series – was the result of Harry Winston’s collaboration with watchmaker Vianney Halter, king of the Steampunk.

The Opus 3 is a mechanical watch that uses a six-window digital display, and it is like no other watch I have seen. When you first lay your eyes upon it you know you’re staring at something quite special, something out of the ordinary.

The rectangular platinum case, which is set with diamonds, has six porthole openings, each displaying a colored number: blue for the hours, which are read in the upper openings on the left and right; black for the minutes, in the lower openings on the left and right; and red for the date, which is displayed vertically in the centre windows. If you wait patiently you can see some magic happen when the top left hour display changes into a four second countdown to the new minute.

The Opus was admittedly dogged with production problems upon its launch, the main one being the amount of energy required to make the six discs turn. Giving up wasn’t an option though, so over seven years the mechanism was worked on and perfected with the help master watchmakers at Audemars Piguet Renaud et Papi (APRP). Their combined genius managed to fix the problems and deliver the watch complete and working in all its glory. According to Harry Winston not a single client asked for a refund during the seven year wait!

With that kind of history the Opus 3 became a legendary watch, and as a lover of all things horology I can still remember my first day at Marcus Watches two years ago when I was given a tour of the vault and came across this gem. Those six porthole windows staring up at me with the colored number read out. The story behind the watch just makes it that much more interesting. For me this is one of the most special pieces in our collection and sadly the piece pictured here is the last Opus we have left. This platinum and diamond version, which was limited to a production of just 5 pieces world, means this is one of our most collectable watches as well.

For more information, click the Locate Watch button below or visit the Marcus Watches website. Photo credit: Alex Rose. Additional photo courtesy Harry Winston.