The King Of Lume And His Magical World Of Super-LumiNova

Thompson professes that he has never been good at sketching. At university, he always preferred to be building and modeling things in the workshop and started making rings for friends and family. Adding luminescence to his jewelry came much later, and it almost didn’t happen. “John Gonzales, a friend in the U.S., sent me a message about how I should add Moonglow to my jewelry and sent me a screenshot,” shares Thompson. “I told him that I didn’t want to do ‘glowy’ things, that I thought it was really corny, but he insisted. So I eventually made one for him and posted a couple of pictures. Things went crazy from there. I don’t think I've ever been so catastrophically incorrect!”
 

If you have ever met Thompson, you will know what a likable guy he is, and his friendly nature and newly found expertise at working with luminescent materials quickly led to collaborations with some of the top names in independent watchmaking, including MB&F, DeBethune, Sarpaneva, Schofield Watch Company, Linde Werdelin, MW&Co, and Bamford Watch Department.
 

“With the DeBethune watch that we collaborated on (the De Bethune DB28GS Grand Bleu), for example, we were searching for a blue that was the perfect match for their thermally oxidized titanium. I sat down with the chemists at Tritec to create a new lume at the base chemical level (called Blue Moon). After four days of being locked in a lab near Zurich, we had a glass bottle of 2g of the stuff. I jumped on a train and headed to the DeBethune workshop and handed it to Denis Flageollet like I was Jason Bourne!” says Thompson.
 

The Blue Moon lume was engineered to be the on-brand color of De Bethune, but it also had properties to make it glow similar to the brand's iconic blue hue. Getting something to glow a dark color is, "pure Jedi" says Thompson.

When asking Thompson what the inspiration behind the name Blue Moon, he remarked, "Many De Bethune watches take their names from the music industry. Kind Of Blue is the famous Miles Davis album...Steel Wheels is, of course, The Rolling Stones. I had no idea of this connection until I was having dinner with Denis Flageollet near the DB manufacture and he tells me. His wife instantly remarked, “ahh Blue Moon, just like the Billie Holiday song!”

His latest project is with MW&Co and its Asset collection. Without knowing it, MW&Co had the perfect design for Thompson to experiment with. “I discovered MW&Co at Baselworld last year. I was walking past their booth when I saw a disassembled watch in their showcase. It stopped me in my tracks with its shock absorbers and micro-engineered details,” explains Thompson. After discussions with the brand’s founders, Alain Carrere and Romain Mussato, during the fair and then via email, Thompson went to visit the small independent brand in its hometown of Toulouse to better understand their “Made in France” philosophy.
 

The Badgerite Thompson developed for MW&Co is an innovation called Palladium Blue. It gives off a gray color in daylight and a bright blue glow at night. “When we saw it for the first time, we were like kids, hiding away in the dark for hours,” laughs Carrere. “For me, the definition of this watch is just cool. There are no other words for it, not even in my native French! It has that wow effect that takes the lume game to a whole new level, you just can’t stop staring at it.”

Palladium is also a bit of a wink to Iron Man franchise and the fact that Robert Downey Jr. wears Thompson’s rings.
 

"There is something about lume that brings out the child in us. “It is like chocolate milk, the toys out of a gumball machine, the glow-in-the-dark stars on your bedroom ceiling, it is an instant throwback to those childhood memories,” says Thompson. “I charge up my ring for my kids at bedtime, but I also showed it to a man at SalonQP who must have been 175 years old, and he just stood there and giggled. Gold just doesn’t make you laugh like that!”
 

Learn more about James Thompson and Black Badger at his website (HERE)