Hands-On: SpaceOne’s Tellurium Is An Incredible, Affordable Celestial Watch – And Now It Comes In Blue And Black

It’s finally time to talk about SpaceOne. In fact, it’s far past time. There’s been a wild rise, fall (or rather pause), and rise again of the SpaceOne brand over the last two years, and we haven’t fully covered any of it. And there’s a reason.

As a rule, Hodinkee doesn’t cover Kickstarter brands, even if they are run by people with solid backgrounds in the watch space. The business mind behind SpaceOne is no stranger to Hodinkee. Guillaume Ladet seems to be everywhere these days – behind Nivada Grenchen, Vulcain, and, for a while, at the helm of Excelsior Park – so I felt confident that when Ladet launched a brand called Argon with a model called “SpaceOne,” he could deliver on the watch. 

It was a fascinating release with a very futuristic design (very reminiscent of the DeBethune Dream Watch 5), with a Soprod movement and a nine-part module for the jumping hour designed by independent watchmaking up-and-coming star Theo Auffret. That alone was well worth the reasonable price (now around €1,700 to €2,300). Unfortunately, the names involved are never a guarantee in the Kickstarter space, so rather than picking and choosing, we just wait to see the watches actually be made and delivered before we cover them.

The Argon Kickstarter was a massive success at launch. On the launch day, May 11, 2023, the project registered $100,000 within the first minute. The project was very quickly fully funded, and deposits were racing toward the million-dollar mark when they all stopped. If you go to the Kickstarter page now, it just says, “Argon Watches (Suspended) is the subject of an intellectual property dispute and is currently unavailable.” 

On July 1, 2023, the brand sent out a press release that explained that due to a claim from a U.S.-based brand called Aargon, Kickstarter shut down their campaign. Ladet offered to change the brand to the name it is now, SpaceOne, and initially, Kickstarter okayed this idea. But they eventually changed course and shut down the project, refunding all the money. Despite this and the lack of funds, SpaceOne plugged ahead and tried to make sure that every person who originally showed interest got to support their Jumping Hour. As watches eventually started to be delivered, SpaceOne went from a Kickstarter brand to a serious proposition for futuristic watchmaking at an affordable price.

In April of this year, SpaceOne doubled down on the futuristic design with the Tellurium. For this model, the brand enlisted the help of Olivier Gamiette, a French designer known for his work in the watch and automotive space (a tale as old as time, designers working in both worlds, it seems). The goal was to create the heliocentric display of a tellurium in a portable wristwatch format.

A tellurium (also known as a tellurion) is a complex mechanism and display often found in a clock showing how day, night, and seasons all derive from the rotation and orientation of Earth and how it rotates around the sun. SpaceOne is not the first to achieve this display in a wristwatch (Ulysse Nardin also made a tellurium as a part of its 1990s “Trilogy Of Time” series). While Olivier Gamiette tackled the design, Theo Auffret tackled the horological component. Many of the clocks were perpetual calendars, but that’s not quite the case here. But that’s totally excusable in my book. For the reasonable price of €2,990, it’s a strong entry into my ongoing list of affordable watchmaking that made me smile this year.

The SpaceOne Tellurium has a display for the month and date at 6 o’clock on the dial. The planetary wheel (as a part of Auffret’s module) is connected to this day and date, so it should remain accurate on its own, but since it’s not a perpetual calendar, there is a quick set date function via the crown that will allow you to adjust for the length of the month without impacting the position of the Earth and the moon relative to the sun. There are also numerals at 4, 8, and 12 on the time-telling dial so you don’t get lost in space, so to speak, as you check the time.

Auffret’s module sits on top of a Soprod P024 H4 movement and looks a little like the prototype shown below. This is a workhorse automatic movement but one that lacks a little bit in terms of power reserve, with only 38 hours to keep you going. This might be a concern when you’re talking about a calendar watch that you really don’t want to go through the headache of setting if you don’t have to.

There are three stars of the show on the design side. Well, that’s cheating a bit because there are three that I’m lumping into one. First is the case shape, with the very sleek and “Concept car-esque” design that suits Gamiette’s personal background as a car designer and drives home the futuristic design. Second is the use of the aventurine and the polished titanium stars that help the dial to pop. But you can’t miss the titanium balls that act as the tellurion display of the sun, Earth, and moon. Even cooler, since they sit above the dial level when viewed at the right angle, you get them to pop off the dial “inversion” and can view them as their own display.

There are two things to note here. Most important (and unfortunate) is that the model you’ve seen here is completely sold out. We’re running this story in advance of the release of 200 each of the same design but in blue and black titanium, dropping Thursday, December 5 at 10 am ET. The other note is that the examples here are on a rubber strap by Delugs (one I enjoy quite a bit) with a fantastic deployant strap, but that is an additional €165. It’s well worth it, though, and a similar strap is what I wear my MAD1S on all the time.

For a watch measuring 42mm wide by 50mm lug to lug and with 16mm thickness, it wears about as well as you could hope. Comparing a watch like this to a Tudor is a bit silly – they’re totally different use cases, and the measurements certainly won’t come close. One major downside is the 30m water resistance. Sure, it’s not a dive watch, but 30m is one of those numbers that sticks in my head and makes me think, “Well… 50 meters would have been nicer.”

Added to the list of thoughtful impracticalities is the choice to put the crown at 12 o’clock. It’s not convenient, but locating the crown elsewhere would have completely destroyed the futuristic design. Here, it sits at the end of this very spacecraft design and looks a bit like a thruster propelling the watch through space. You can also see the rear lugs of the watch (the 6 o’clock side is lugless), which helps the Tellurium better hug the wrist. Turned to the side, the watch doesn’t look nearly as thick as the measurements suggest.

When I photographed this watch at Geneva Watch Days earlier this year, I got to check out two new versions of the Tellurium, in blued Grade 5 titanium with that same aventurine dial and polished titanium stars and another in black Grade 5 titanium with a black dial. Both were interesting as their own options, but expecting to write this story faster than I ended up doing, I didn’t want to focus on two unreleased pieces, so I didn’t photograph them as much. Now, both will be available for purchase at 10 am on December 5th in limited editions of 200. You can see them now on SpaceOne’s website.

All three are cohesive, but the black feels very distinct in its own right. DeBethune has really locked down the aesthetic of blued titanium with things like the DB28 “Kind of Blue,” and the fact that SpaceOne’s original Jumping Hour looked quite a bit like a Dream Watch 5 from DeBethune and it’s an interesting question how far you want to go down the blue watch path. That said, in considering one up for myself, I am leaning toward the blue. It’s just an eye-catching aesthetic that I don’t have in my collection. You can see more pictures on SpaceOne’s website.

No matter what you pick, it’s hard to go wrong. I put this in the category of relatively affordable and creative watches that are really picking up steam. The involvement of someone like Theo Auffret in making more affordable watches would have been unimaginable for me a few years ago. You could say the same about Raúl Pàges working with William Massena, Furlan Marri working with Dominique Renaud and Julien Tixier for a Secular Perpetual Calendar, and, of course, the MAD1 from Max Büsser. All of the above feel like watches I need to have in my collection as representative of a cool moment in the watch industry that I hope continues.

SpaceOne Tellurium, Grade 5 titanium case (blue or black) brushed, polished, and sandblasted with 42mm width by 50mm lug to lug and 16mm thickness; 30m water resistance. Aventurine or black dial with polished titanium stars and PVD-treated titanium apertures;  Hands showing hours and minutes. Date, month, and planetary wheel centered on the sun, indicating the earth’s and moon’s exact position over 100+ years. Soprod P024 H4 automatic movement with a module designed and conceptualized by Théo Auffret, manufactured in Switzerland and assembled in Paris, and 38 hours of power reserve. Fabric strap with 22 to 18mm taper and titanium pin buckle. Price: €2,990

For more information, visit SpaceOne’s website.

​Hodinkee 

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