Cazalea delves into the fascinating world of Seiko's moon phase timekeeping devices, from clocks to a diverse array of quartz watches. This article highlights the brand's ingenuity in incorporating this classic complication across various forms, offering a unique perspective on Seiko's horological breadth.
Seiko makes a huge variety of clocks and watches, with many interesting variations and complications. The complication that first caught my eye was the lunar or moon phase indicator. In this article I'd like to review a few of the watches I've owned with this feature.
THE MOON AND ITS PHASESThe moon is visible to many of us, wherever we live on the globe. Not as visible as the sun, but we often see it illuminated in the evening, at night, and in the morning. Because portions of the moon appear to be hidden in the earth's shadow, the visible "shape" of the moon changes. Watches that display the current moon (or lunar) phase are popular with many watch collectors and especially PuristS.
(courtesy Wiki Commons)
SEIKO MOON PHASE TIMEKEEPING DEVICES Many of the complications favored by PuristS are not found in Seiko watches. But moon phase indicators appear in many forms. (Sarpaneva anyone?) In essence, the moon indicator rotates in 29 1/2 days (as does the moon around the earth) and shows you a simulation of the moon as you might see it in the sky.
In mechanical watches this is done with loads of gears and there are claims of accuracy of one day in 122 years, 500 years, 2000 years, etc. I'm going to ignore the technical functionality for the purpose of this article, and just look at the moons.
A few years ago I got myself totally hooked on moon phase watches of all sorts, including Seikos, and although I have partially recovered, most of the photographic lessons remain. Can I walk you through some of the various Seikos?
CLOCKSI don't just have Seiko moon phase watches, I have a couple of Seiko moon clocks. Here's an 17" farmhouse clock with one movement to power the hours, minutes and moon, and a separate movement for just the small seconds. Next to it you can see a complete calendar (day, date, month, time) with moon phase. Both are quartz powered. Notice that the smaller clock on the left is showing the correct moon phase; the big one's battery died and I hadn't reset it when I took the photo (now where's the user manual?).
I have had several mechanical Seiko clocks (well a dozen or two) but none with moon phase indications.
WATCHES All the watches shown below are quartz-powered timepieces, but that doesn't diminish the ingenuity of the Seiko development engineers. Take a look:
In addition to the selection of men's watches shown above, we have this nice dressy little model for Mrs Cazalea. She's hard on her watches - notice the bezel scratches...
My giant central moon, Seiko 5 with integrated bracelet and fake jewels.
The gold-tone quartz date alarm moon, with a tasty backdrop and ostrich strap.
Would you like that watch in gray tones? No problem.
From a distance, this is a visually-similar dial in a sportier case, but this watch is a chronograph rather than a date/alarm. The dial and lettering are so fine that those with weak eyes would never know the difference.
Here's a thin, dressy watch with bottom moon and top date.
Same date at the top but a much larger moon indicator on this one. The same movement appears (flipped 180 degrees) in a watch in the group photo above.
Here is a rectangular case, housing a date and moon.
This was one of my favorites, a 4-sub-dial dual moon (traveling watch?).
Not so. That's a day/night indicator on the left and the moon phase on the right.
With date and day on the bottom and the hours and minutes in the usual place.
The moon has a direct influence (cause?) of our tides. So why not combine a lunar and tidal watch?
There was a booklet with all sorts of calculations and offsets to determine the general tidal action along various coastlines around the world.
I really wanted this watch - hunted it down across the early web - and sold it fairly quickly after I determined it really wasn't that easy to use.
The moon phase "Age of Discovery" pocket watch shown below was one of the last I bought. Sorry, but this is the only photo I can find of that watch.
GRAND SEIKO / CREDOR Yes, I have a Spring Drive moon. Who could pass up a chance to own this watch?
or its Seiko equivalent, photo courtesy of Tim Jackson
CITIZEN
I didn't learn my lesson, and I bought this one - thinking if one moon is good, more moons are better! This is not a Seiko, but a CITIZEN ASTRODEA.
I've given you a large image for your viewing pleasure. (when a watch comes with a loupe in the package you know it's going to be unreadable to the naked eye)
It took me a long time to sell this watch, and it turned into one of the most amusing transactions ever (but that's another story).
Please - if moon phases rock your boat, let us know.
Here is the moon as it appears over my house in Southern California (and on my "desktop").
Cazalea
