The Freak is one of Ulysse Nardin’s iconic watches and watchmaking’s first act of modern art is a pure celebration of its movement.

The timepiece's entire movement is driven by the mainspring and rotates in such a way that the movement is the instrument for telling time. The barrel replaces the dial and the ethereal gold-colored escape bridge replaces the usual watch hands.

However, this revolutionary design faced some power challenges at the beginning. The reason lies behind the mainspring occupying the space between the movement and the case, resulting in simply not enough power to drive the watch -- It was impossible to create a mainspring big enough to be functional.

Ludwig Oechslin, the visionary watchmaker who developed the Freak, found the right way to overcome this challenge. To solve this issue, Ludwig took the situation in a new direction and shifted the mainspring to a layer just below the movement. He managed to get a full rotation once every 60 minutes and created a second indication on the watch barrel that completed a full rotation once every 12 hours. The hours were read from an indicator fixed to the mainspring barrel while the minutes were told from an indicator fixed to the escapement bridge.

Ref. 2303-270/BLACK

43 mm Titanium with black DLC case, Sapphire crystal case back. In-house UN-230, self-winding movement; flying carrousel rotating around its own axis. Exclusive central oscillator with large diameter. Openwork veal or alligator strap with “point de bride” stitches.