Logan Kuan Rao
Logan Kuan Rao is a Guangzhou-based watchmaker who runs a one-person studio and handles every stage himself, from design and prototyping to manufacturing, quality control, finishing and assembly. He buys in only the mainspring, jewels and shock absorbers. His first watch, the Orca, began as a brass prototype in 2016 and became one of the best-known pieces from China's new generation of independent watchmakers; the Wuwei, a three-handed watch with wheels made entirely in-house, followed.
His route in was unusual. Both his parents are architects, and a 2017 SJX profile quotes him saying he wants his watches to be as timeless as a well-designed building. He began as a moderator on one of China's largest online watch forums and has loved antique pocket watches and wristwatches since his student days. Not content merely to buy them, he taught himself watchmaking while studying Materials Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, and later studied Product Design at the Royal College of Art. Monochrome reports that he bought his first tools around 2013 and credits George Daniels' Watchmaking as foundational. His first workshop was in Kunming, Yunnan, in a space his parents rented for him, and he later moved to Guangzhou. His machines are repurposed industrial equipment: a retired lathe from a radar factory in Hefei, a milling machine modified from a pantograph from a Suzhou oxygen-machine factory, and a CNC machine retrofitted from Foxconn equipment in Shenzhen. He collects historic pocket watch and wristwatch movements, favouring French pocket watches, and names Jean-Antoine Lépine and Abraham-Louis Breguet as his heroes.
The Orca is designed to evoke a killer whale breaching the surface of the sea. It has a 37.5 mm case, fitted with 19/16 straps, and a two-tone German silver dial, frosted and sandblasted and engraved entirely by hand. The movement is 30.8 mm across, beats at 21,600 vibrations per hour and has a 52-hour power reserve; the brand lists the watch in 18k white gold. Its decoration turns traditional finishing into storytelling: the contrast between anglage and matte surfaces outlines the orca, Côtes de Genève mimic the rolling waves, and perlage suggests spray and foam. The brand's own history of the model runs from a brass prototype in 2016 and a first sterling silver watch, PV1, in 2017, to the Orca Very First in platinum 950 in 2021, prototypes PV2 in rose gold and PV3 in white gold in 2022, and numbered watches 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9 in 2022 and 2, 7 and 8 in 2023, nine pieces in all. The 2017 prototype, described by SJX, was 37 mm across and 7.8 mm high with a 3D-printed sterling silver case and a 50-hour reserve, and in 2017 he planned a limited edition of nine at about US$19,000. Monochrome notes that early production Orcas used wheels from a factory in Tianjin before he learned to make wheels himself.
The second model, the Wuwei (无为, 'non-doing'), takes its name from the Taoist idea of no deliberate action. The brand frames it as a response to an industry that stresses finishing techniques, special mechanisms and rare materials: a watch, it argues, can be good without those deliberate details, relying instead on the atmosphere and depth of view of the movement, and on the shapes, silhouettes and proportions of its plates. The case is 37.5 mm across, with a hand-engraved two-tone German silver dial, and the movement is 33 mm across, beats at 21,600 vibrations per hour and has a 46-hour power reserve; the brand lists it in 18k yellow gold and platinum 950. Its early prototypes were the Iceberg: PV1 Iceberg Unipush in 2018, then the Equal-Push versions at 14,400 vibrations per hour in 2019 and 21,600 in 2020, before a yellow gold PV4 in 2021, PV5 and No. 2 in 2023, and No. 4, No. 10 and an 18-carat platinum No. 18 in 2024. The Equal-Push escapement adds a joint lever to the co-axial escapement to distribute impulse force more evenly, and he filed a patent for it; Monochrome reports that making the mechanism readable by eye meant larger components and a lower frequency, which hurt stability, so he moved to a Swiss lever escapement in a layout similar to the Equal-Push design, and the Wuwei was his first watch with wheels made entirely in-house. A prototype of a third watch with one more hand was in progress in 2023.
Unlike the Orca, the Wuwei is not a limited edition. The brand says about 20 pieces will be delivered every two years, each with its serial number hand-engraved on the side of the barrel plate; WristCheck reported a plan of about 20 watches over 2023 and 2024, and that he avoids trade shows and keeps a modest social media presence. No current prices are published in the sources used for this listing; the only figure is the 2017 projection for the Orca. This listing draws on the brand's website, SJX (2017), Monochrome (September 2023) and WristCheck. The New York Times profile from January 2024 could not be accessed, and the brand's site was supplied as pasted text.