Left of the Dial: A Roundup of Odd & Unusual Displays

A long, long time ago, I remember having one of those “these kids today” conversations, when the person I was speaking to was fretting about young people only learning to tell time with digital watches and clock displays and not being able to read an analog clock.

Someone then suggested that digital was the much more intuitive way to display the time. But if you learned how to tell time on an Urwerk, for example, it would feel just as natural as looking at a Calatrava.

The exact details of this confab are lost to the fog of memory, but it did spark in me an enduring interest in non-traditional timepieces. Like learning a different language, the following timepieces will expand your mind!

The newest addition to our cabinet of curiosities comes from Italian watchmaker Gagà Milano. Founded by Ruben Tomella, this horological house has always embraced a quirky aesthetic.
 

However, for the new Art Deco-inspired aesthetic of Gagà Laboratorio’s Labormatic collection, Tomello tapped tattoo artist and collector Mo Coppoletta to turn out two new timepieces – the Bauhaus and the Cinquanta – and it feels like you’re wearing a timepiece devised by a comic book artist from the 1930s vision of the future.

An aperture at 12 o’clock houses the hour indicator, while the middle segment indicates the minutes. Meanwhile, the rotating Gagà Laboratorio logo in the center functions as a pseudo-seconds indicator, replacing a traditional central seconds hand.
 

It feels a bit like Duolingo on the wrist, but once you decipher it, it’s a real conversation starter.

It’s easy to underestimate the uproar Ulysse Nardin’s Freak caused when it burst onto the scene in 2001.

The story starts with just-out-of-school watchmaker Carole Forestier, who had just won the Prix de la Fondation Abraham-Louis Breguet for a central carousel tourbillon design. However, to make the mechanism work on a replicable scale, Ulysse Nardin brought in horologist Ludwig Oechslin.
 

The resulting timepiece featured a brand-new escapement, had no crown (the time was adjusted by rotating the bezel), and most importantly for this article, no dial. Instead, the Freak’s revolving movement featured a gear train and escapement that rotated to indicate the hours and minutes.

The Freak was also meant to be “a lab on the wrist,” so, of course, it has gone through many changes over the decades, but it has always followed the same guiding principle: to let the inner workings lead the way – and indicate the time.
 

The most recent Freak – the 120-piece limited edition Freak [X Gold Enamel] – is the first in the collection to feature a guilloche-flinqué rotating disc as a backdrop, even though it still employs the flying carousel complication to display the time via its rotating movement.

The hours are indicated via a pointer on the disc, while the movement itself turns 360 degrees each hour to indicate the minutes. Moreover, because it’s held without an upper bridge, the movement appears to soar over the hour disc. A flight of fancy indeed!

Almost any watch from Urwerk’s impressive oeuvre could have made this roundup, but we’re going with the UR-101 T-Rex Edition, which was launched last March.
 

A tribute to the UR-101 – the watch that started it all for Urwerk founders Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner – the signature of this timepiece is its wandering hours display. Fun Fact: The watch was inspired by a clock made for the Pope by the Campani brothers in 1652. However, with its asymmetrical silhouette, it has a futuristic spaceship-like look.

The cool thing about the UR-101 is that it embodies Frei’s and Baumgartner’s close relationship. Frei is the designer, while Baumgartner is the mechanical conceptualist, and with the UR-101 T-Rex Edition, their talents merge with a spiky bronze case that serves as the dial.
 

The watch features two satellites, both with six-hour markers; however, the way these satellites are displayed is very atypical because these markers float above a 180-degree arched aperture showcasing the minutes. Despite its dinosaur skin, it’s quite the sophisticated contraption.

Another, but more traditional take on the mysterious wandering hours, the Code 11.59 Starwheel from Audemars Piguet is a tribute to quirky complications from the past.

Invented in the 17th century, wandering hours display the hours using a system of satellites that revolve along a minute scale arranged in the form of an arc. This aesthetic presentation of the hours and minutes brings a certain mystique to the reading of time. The system fell out of favor in the 20th century but was reintroduced and renamed the Starwheel Audemars Piguet in 1991.
 

By applying it to its Code 11.59 collection. The brand created an ultra-contemporary yet unorthodox timepiece that combines black ceramic with 18-carat white gold. For this iteration, Audemars Piguet collaborated with the French artist Ugo Gattoni, who developed an original, colorful, and imaginative universe to echo the contemporary design of this timepiece and the mysterious technicality of the wandering time display.

On the watch, Gattoni’s universe is expressed by a central rotor that makes a complete revolution every three hours. Three aluminum discs are fixed to this rotor, each turning on its axis. Each disc has four digits, from 1 to 12, that take turns pointing to the minute scale printed on an arched sector.
 

The 18-carat white gold trotteuse is slightly curved at the tip to follow the relief of the discs, indicating the seconds like in a traditional timepiece. Lastly, a blue aventurine “sky” creates a starry background for these flying saucers.

Unlike a traditional analog clock or watch with hour and minute hands that sweep the dial, a jumping hour, or jump-hour, utilizes an aperture that jumps from one hour to the next at the 60-minute mark. Also known as a direct read or digital display, this complication is a popular way for watchmakers to show their playful side.
 

The most famous historical examples of this complication are IWC’s Pallweber or Cartier’s Tank À Guichets. Then, in 2009, Louis Vuitton took the jumping hour design to a whole new level.

Rather than using an aperture to display the hour, the Tambour Spin Time placed the number on a decorated cube that spun around to reveal the hour. The concept came to its designer, Michel Navas, master watchmaker for La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, while admiring an old-school departure board. You know, the kind that updated its list of cities and times by flipping over its numbers and names like the alarm clock in the movie “Groundhog Day-"
 

Louis Vuitton, as we all know, started as a luggage maker, so this travel-inspired timepiece was a natural fit. And just as travel has undergone significant shifts in the 21st century, the Spin Time has seen many updates since 2009. Our favorite is the Tambour Taiko Spin Time Air Antipode, a travel watch featuring cubes with softer, more rounded geometry circling a centralized map of the world over an easy-to-read dial.

Launched at LVMH Watch Week 2025, the cubes in the Spin Time Air Antipode version feature 24 city names. Each cube has two city names that are exactly twelve hours apart so that they correspond to the same numerical hour (with one being at night while the other is in the morning). The hours are indicated by a yellow triangle mounted on a central rotating disc beneath the world map design. We’ve never seen a GMT like it.