Ulysse Nardin’s Freak [X Gold Enamel] Pairs a Superwatch with Grand Feu Artistry

Ulysse Nardin, the independent Le Locle manufacture that has spent more than two decades redefining what a mechanical watch can look like, has unveiled one of the most arresting takes yet on its flagship Freak collection: the Freak [X Gold Enamel]. Limited to 120 pieces, the watch pairs the model’s hand-less, dial-less mechanical bravado with the centuries-old craft of enamelling, executed in-house by the brand’s own atelier, Donzé Cadrans.

When Rolf W. Schnyder’s team first showed the Freak in 2001, under a codename that stuck, it had no hands, no dial and no crown, setting time instead through a mechanism built into the bezel. It was also the first watch to bring silicon into mainstream watchmaking, a material choice behind more than twenty patents and still central to the Freak’s technical identity today. In 2023 the Freak One collected the “Most Iconic Watch” prize at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève; the slimmer Freak X, introduced in 2019, added a conventional winding and setting crown for easier daily wear.

The Freak X Gold Enamel keeps the model’s signature “flying carousel”: the entire movement rotates to track the minutes while an hour disc, driven by a pointer, completes its own circuit, all without an upper bridge holding it in place. Housed in a 43mm blue PVD titanium case with rose gold side parts, it runs on the automatic, 72-hour Calibre UN-230, whose silicon escapement, hairspring and balance wheel are made in-house at Ulysse Nardin’s own SIGATEC lab.

What sets this edition apart sits on the dial: a guilloché-flinqué disc, its sunburst pattern built up under several layers of deep blue enamel. Enamelling itself long predates watchmaking, reaching back more than 3,000 years, but has been paired with dials since the 17th century and today survives in only a handful of workshops worldwide, Donzé Cadrans among them. Ulysse Nardin began working with the Le Locle atelier, founded in 1972 by master enameller Francis Donzé, in the 1980s and acquired it outright in 2011. Eight artisans work there now; learning the fundamentals of the craft alone takes a minimum of five years.

The rotating disc is cast in 22-carat rose gold, an alloy of 917 parts gold to 83 parts copper chosen for its stability under the kiln’s heat. Raw pigments are ground by hand with a mortar and pestle, mixed into a paste, applied to the plate and fired at roughly 800°C; three to four further layers follow, each fired in turn to build depth and luminosity, before the disc is hand-polished. Bubbling or cracking at any stage can send the piece back to the start. Each disc takes a full day, roughly eight hours of work, to complete, which is why no two are ever quite alike.

The Freak [X Gold Enamel] is finished with a blue alligator strap, rose-gold stitching and a matching folding buckle, and is backed by a five-year warranty. Reference 2305-270LE-3AE-BLUE/1A is priced at CHF 46,000 including Swiss VAT, roughly EUR 49,100, USD 48,500 or GBP 42,700 depending on market.