Cultural Domain

For its 40th anniversary, The Hour Glass celebrates with contemporary art as much as modern watchmaking. Group managing director Michael Tay tells us why.

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IN THE 40 years that The Hour Glass has been in the watch business, it has done far more than sell watches. Established in 1979, it was the first to change the retail environment for watches by creating a luxurious salon befitting the exceptional craftsmanship of the timepieces it sold.

It was also The Hour Glass that expanded the world of luxury watches to people other than purists and collectors via open-door events such as Tempus in 2004 and 2007. Convinced that watches are not merely glorified timekeepers but bona fide art pieces, The Hour Glass now has two high-concept retail spaces: L’Atelier and Malmaison. These stores are dedicated to enriching watch culture in Singapore and cultivating an interest in watchmaking.

So perhaps it’s truly apt that its 40th-anniversary celebrations will be kick-started by an exhibition named Then Now Beyond, a showcase of contemporary art, design and watchmaking. But what are art and design doing in an exhibition for a watch retailer? Says Michael Tay, group managing director of The Hour Glass group: “Watches are objects which require the combination of many knowledge disciplines: physics, mathematics, engineering, metallurgy, art and design. In this exhibition, we decided to position the timekeeper principally within the universe of contemporary design.”

Indeed, Tay is an aficionado and avid collector of modern and contemporary art. Every art piece on display at Malmaison and L’Atelier belongs to him.