Ressence Type 3 watches

The Ressence Type 3 is an oil-filled automatic watch from the Belgian brand, a 44 mm titanium piece with no crown at 3 o'clock. Benoît Mintiens founded Ressence in Antwerp in 2010, and the brand revealed the Type 3 at Baselworld in May 2013. Later that year it won the Horological Revelation prize at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève.

The case holds two sealed chambers. The upper one, under the sapphire crystal, is filled with oil, which makes the luminous indications look as if they sit on top of the glass. The lower one holds the movement in air. Nothing mechanical links the two: magnets pass the drive from a customised self-winding 2824-2 base calibre to the ROCS 3 module, the system of discs that shows the time. Because oil expands and contracts with heat, a bellows system adjusts the volume of the chamber, and a temperature gauge on the dial shows its state.

There are no hands in the usual sense. The convex dial carries a long tapering pointer for the minutes, with sub-dials revolving within it for the hours, the day of the week and the oil temperature, and an outer ring for the date. As on other Ressence watches, the caseback does the job of the crown, and the sapphire runs edge to edge on the back as well as the front.

The Type 3 is a 44 mm titanium watch, 15 mm thick, and the letters after the name mark the version. The Type 3B is the Black, the 3BB the all-black Black Black, the 3S the Black Sandblasted and the 3N the Night Blue with a blue dial. The Type 3's partly oil-filled module later became the base for the Type 5, a 46 mm titanium diving watch Ressence revealed in December 2015.