Huasuo

Huasuo (华梭) is a Chinese watch brand that sells directly to collectors through its Shopify store, huasuowatch.com, with prices in US dollars, free shipping and a 24-month warranty. Its website and journal give no founder, founding year or workshop address, and the store lists no social media accounts, so none of these is stated here. A review published by the dealer Bob's Watch Store reports that the watch it examined was made in Dongguan, Guangdong province, and that the brand accepts custom dial designs; the retailer Horology Planet carries Huasuo among its independent and Chinese heritage brands, and a Chinese retailer lists its movements as made in China. The brand's own copy is general, speaking of combining traditional craftsmanship with modern design and mentioning a history of "several decades" without detail. The range is built around unusual dial materials (handmade lacquer, natural gemstones, aventurine, mother-of-pearl) plus a few bronze-cased pilot watches, in cases of 36 to 42 mm.

The lacquer dials are the signature. Huasuo says its Xi Pi technique, which it presents as part of China's intangible cultural heritage, builds a dial from dozens or hundreds of ultra-thin layers of natural lacquer, each dried and polished before the next, so no two dials are identical; reviewers and retailers say the multi-layered dials of its best-known lacquer models, such as the HS011 and HS002-1 series, can take up to two months to make. Variations include a Qiangjin gold-line dragon dial in a run of 50, a red "Dan Chen" dial with Chinese-numeral hour markers, a golden nanmu wood dial and mother-of-pearl starry-sky dials. The gemstone dials use tiger's eye, malachite, lapis lazuli, red agate, lazurite, jade, blue sandstone and meteorite, some with moon phase. Teddy Baldassarre's survey of Chinese watch brands calls Huasuo an affordable maker of textured lacquer dials in simple steel cases with Sellita movements, at around $450 for its forest-green and fire-red models, and says the lacquer holds up against some of the best Japanese work.

The standard lacquer watch is a 38 mm round case 10 mm thick (47 mm lug to lug), in 316L steel with a polished domed bezel, a top-hat sapphire crystal, an onion-style crown, a sapphire display caseback and 50 m water resistance. It is offered with the Chinese PT5000 automatic or a Swiss Sellita SW200, both beating at 28,800 vph with hacking seconds and about 38 hours of power reserve (a reviewer measured the SW200 at within about 12 seconds a day). Other movements named on the site are the NH34 GMT and NH35, and Seagull or Tianjin 2892 automatics in the ultra-thin and gemstone watches; the 39 mm handmade-lacquer GMT with an NH34 movement is $313. Reviewers praise the marbled depth of the dials, the leather straps and the value, with most prices between $300 and $700, and note minor quirks such as a ghost date position on some movement configurations, blue anti-reflective coating reflections and small imperfections that come with hand-made dials.

Its most ambitious pieces use hand-wound Chinese tourbillon movements. The H2492 Planet Gemstone watch, the one pictured, has a natural black aventurine dial showing the sun, moon, stars and planets, a grade 5 titanium case listed at 42 mm (the title says 40 mm), a Dandong 5711P central tourbillon with a 120-hour power reserve and a crocodile strap; it was $1,599 and is listed as sold out. The retailer Horology Planet sells a related Lacquer Whisper central flying tourbillon in titanium, 42 mm, with the Dandong SL5711 movement (100-hour reserve), a Chinese lacquer dial with hand-inlaid mother-of-pearl and 24K gold hour markers in three colourways, at $2,999 (regular $3,499), with only 3 of a first batch of 10 left when checked; the two sources give differing specifications for the references they share. Huasuo's own site also lists a 42 mm lacquer-inlaid-bezel flying tourbillon (H0068) with a shell-inlaid bezel, priced at $724 down from $1,392 and sold out; one of its blog posts calls this watch quartz, which contradicts its product listing. Prices on the site start at $297 for a tiger's-eye dress watch.