Culture Of Time It's Another Skull Watch Story For Halloween, What Were The Odds?

Headline image, Fiona Krüger Calavera watch.

If you go back across the last five hundred years of watch- and clockmaking, there is for sure no shortage of skull watches. All the major European centers of watchmaking made them, including Augsburg, Blois (in France), and Geneva. Skull watches were not watches with skulls on the dials, back in the 17th century when they were first really getting off the ground. They were instead, what are classified as "form" watches, which is to say, watches shaped like something other than a basic round watch.

Form watches came in dozens of different shapes and sizes, but skull watches in particular usually followed the same basic design plan: The jaw unhinged, exposing the dial on the underside of the upper part (right where the roof of your mouth would be). In the seventeenth century, a skull watch would have been a memento mori – a reminder of human mortality, of the brevity of life, and of the necessity for humility in the face of inevitable death.

Skulls and skeletons have appeared on and off on clocks and watches almost from the very beginning of mechanical horology – European tower clocks sometimes have a figure of the Grim Reaper that appears when the hour strikes. Skull watches and form watches gradually fell out of favor around the beginning of the 19th century, right about the time that portable precision timekeeping began to become a real possibility and watches became necessities rather than just amusements for the wealthy.

Probably another development that did in the skull watch was the development of actual pockets (early watches were usually worn on a chain or carried in a pouch at the waist). A globular watch is not a comfortable thing to wear and it won't do your silhouette any good jammed into a vest pocket, either. Skull watches enjoyed a bit of a revival during the Victorian era but by then, you were more likely to find a miniature skull as a watch fob (the weight on the end of a watch chain) than as a watch itself.

Skull form watches have never really made a third comeback, partly because they're impractical to carry, and partly because pocket watches these days are a niche of a niche – the annual production of pocket watches from high-end makers like Patek, AP, and Vacheron is a drop in the ocean of wristwatches that come out of Switzerland every year. However, watches with skulls on the dial, or otherwise incorporated into the design of a watch, are in the catalogue of several brands.

Two companies you definitely would not have expected to make skull watches have gotten into the game this year, as well. Louis Vuitton's Tambour Carpe Diem Minute Repeater is, if I'm not mistaken, the only skull watch in production in which the skull is actually animated – you activate the repeater and the jaw drops to reveal the words "carpe diem," which is a message diametrically opposed to the blunt reminder of mortality intended as the message of skull watches from earlier centuries.

As a matter of fact, skull watches in general nowadays seem to use the motif as a kind of exhortation to get out there and enjoy life – the glow-in-the-dark skull used by Bell & Ross is delightfully spooky but it definitely puts a spring in your step, not dread in your heart.

And then there's the Hermès Skeleton Horse And Rider watch, which might be the most grab-your-partner-and-dance-till-you-drop skull watch in the entire history of skull watches. You don't just get a skull on the dial – you get a full-on representation of Gentleman Death, dressed to the nines, riding a skeletal horse under a sky full of stars – both horse and rider are grinning to beat the band. You can call it a memento mori watch if you want but considering the design and execution, it feels more like a celebration of joie de vivre than an evocation of todesangst.

That duality is inherent to the human reaction to skulls, it seems to me – on the one hand, the skull obviously invokes death and mortality, but on the other hand, it is to the part of the brain that recognizes people, a face as well, albeit one with a limited repertoire of expressions. Even there, though, the longer you stare at one, the more fluid the expression seems – is it laughing, or do the downturned corners of the eye sockets seem sad?

Either way, it's symbolically unique amongst the bones that make up the skeleton (the skull is actually made up of 22 individual bones – more if you count the malleus, incus, and stapes in the middle ear). You can write a whole book on its symbolism – people have – and no other part of the skeleton is so rich in meaning, or so fraught with the possibility of fear. After all, nobody's blood runs cold at the sight of a clavicle. And with watches now partly restored to their role as entertainment, rather than necessity, we're probably going to be seeing Mr. Bones grinning up at us from watch dials for a long, long time.