F.P. Journe Chronomètre Holland & Holland Ref. CHH Limited Series Stainless Steel Brown Dial

Sixty-six were made, and no two dials are the same. Journe worked with the London gunmaker Holland and Holland, who cut up two nineteenth-century Damascus barrels and browned the steel by the method used on their own guns, so each dial carries its own grain. Thirty-eight came from one barrel and twenty-eight from the other, engraved on the caseback. The pattern runs somewhere between tiger eye and watered silk, and none of it was designed by anyone.

The steel case is 39 mm and under nine millimeters thick, the same proportions as the Chronomètre Bleu, which is the watch this one is built on. The dial carries nothing but the brand's painted numerals and a minute track, with ivory steel hands over the Damascus ground. Everything else was left off so the metal could be read. Steel is almost unheard of on an F.P. Journe, which is part of the appeal.