The Ressence TYPE 9 Jules Wittock puts a hand-drawn maze on the smallest watch the brand makes, milled 0.2 mm wide into Grade 5 titanium and filled in by hand. Two colourways, Emerald Green and black, thirty pieces of each, CHF 20,000 before tax. The maze hides a word, and the watch will only show it to you twice a day.
The Ressence TYPE 9 Jules Wittock in Emerald Green, reference T9 JWE.
New: Ressence TYPE 9 Jules Wittock, a hand-drawn maze in Emerald Green and Black
Ressence TYPE 9 Jules Wittock, a hand-drawn maze in Emerald Green and Black retails at CHF 20,000 before taxes.
Commentary
Ressence has been making an art edition roughly once a year, and the roster reads like a survey of artists who work in line. Stefan Sagmeister in 2020, Alain Silberstein in 2022, Shantell Martin in 2024, Daniel Engelberg last year, Terumasa Ikeda earlier this one. Jules Wittock is the first of them to hand the owner something to solve.
The T9 JWB puts the same maze in white on a black dial, inside a black-coated case.
There is a tension in this edition that the earlier ones did not have. Ressence’s whole design argument is subtraction: no crown, no hands, discs that orbit so the time arrives as one uncluttered picture, and the word the brand uses for the result is clarity. What has been milled into this dial is a maze, which is the one graphic form whose entire purpose is to make a path hard to follow.
Because the ROCS discs turn continuously, Wittock’s paths only line up into a readable labyrinth at midnight and midday, and the word hidden along them can only be read at those two moments. The rest of the day the drawing sits in pieces. Mintiens is candid that this is the intent, describing an artwork that keeps changing and appears differently with every glance. It is a good idea, and it also means the thing you are buying is legible for a few minutes out of every twelve hours.
The ALD coating reads green head-on and shifts towards purple off-axis.
That brings up the money, and the numbers line up easily enough. A standard TYPE 9 is CHF 12,500 before tax and this one is CHF 20,000, so the maze, the lacquer work and the thirty-piece run carry a premium of CHF 7,500. Milling a 0.2 mm channel into titanium and filling it by hand is real work, and Ressence has never pretended the art editions were anything else. Whether it is seven and a half thousand francs of work is a judgement each buyer makes alone.
Release Details
Ressence has made this year’s art edition with Jules Wittock, a Brussels artist who draws labyrinths freehand, and it arrives as two references. The T9 JWE has a white-filled maze on an Emerald Green ALD-coated titanium dial that shifts towards purple as the angle changes. The T9 JWB puts the same white maze on a black titanium dial inside a black-coated case. Thirty of each, sixty in all.
Every Wittock maze follows one rule: one entrance, one exit, and a single path between them that spells a word. He has been drawing them since childhood and works at scale on linen, with some canvases running to ten metres, and he has a ceiling mural in the Brussels Palace of Justice. Getting that down onto a 75 mm titanium disc is the whole commission, and the line width shows how far it had to travel. Two tenths of a millimetre, milled into the metal, then filled by hand with white lacquer and Grade A Super-LumiNova.
The word only becomes readable when the dial discs align, which happens at midnight and midday. Wittock traces the idea back to a childhood habit of making a wish on a clock reading 11:11 or 22:22. What the word actually spells is not being published. Ressence says it stays between the artist and the sixty people who end up owning one.
Underneath is the ROCS 9, the Ressence Orbital Convex System module driven off the minute axle of a customised automatic base calibre. It swaps hands for discs that orbit, which is why the maze is never still. The module runs on 31 jewels, 20 gears and four ball bearings at 28,800 vibrations per hour, with 36 hours of reserve. The dial disc is 75 mm of Grade 5 titanium turning on a jewel ball bearing, its eccentric hour satellites inclined at 9.75 degrees.
The case is polished Grade 5 titanium, 39 mm across and 11 mm thick, under a domed sapphire crystal with the anti-reflective coating on the inside face. There is no crown on it at all: winding happens by turning the caseback through 12 degrees, in either direction, and the time is set the same way. Water resistance is 1 ATM, which covers splashes and nothing beyond them.
The domed sapphire sits over discs that orbit, so the maze is never still.
The caseback repays a look of its own. Wittock’s maze runs engraved around its outer ring, and each watch carries its number in the run stamped below the artist’s signature.
The maze runs around the caseback, which carries the piece number under Wittock’s signature.
The strap is soft calf leather in 20/18 mm on a titanium ardillon buckle. The finished watch comes to 182 components and 42 grams with the strap fitted, which is about as light as anything mechanical at this size gets. Both references are CHF 20,000 excluding taxes, going on sale on 17 September 2026 through Ressence’s own online store and selected retailers.
The art series has been running long enough to have a shape. Sagmeister’s TYPE 3X Look Up came in 2020 and Silberstein’s TYPE 1 S REV Grail Watch in 2022. Shantell Martin’s TYPE 1 Square White followed for TimeForArt in 2024, then Daniel Engelberg’s TYPE 8 DE1 and DE2 in 2025 and Terumasa Ikeda’s TYPE 9 IKE earlier this year. Wittock is the second artist running to be given the TYPE 9.
The T9 JWB on black leather. Both references are limited to thirty pieces.
Benoît Mintiens, who founded Ressence in 2010, puts the choice of collaborator in terms of whether the work survives translation. “We look for a visual language that translates physically onto the watch,” he says. “Jules’s labyrinths are engraved into the dial and filled by hand, so the drawing lives in depth.” Wittock’s own account of it is shorter. “I like hiding things in my paintings,” he says. “There’s always a mystery within the maze.”
Ressence TYPE 9 Jules Wittock Specifications
Model: Ressence TYPE 9 Jules Wittock, in collaboration with the artist Jules Wittock References: T9 JWE (Emerald Green); T9 JWB (black) Limited edition: 30 pieces per reference, 60 in total Movement: Patented ROCS 9, the Ressence Orbital Convex System module, driven by the minute axle of a customised automatic base calibre; self-winding Functions: Hours, minutes Frequency: 28,800 vph (4 Hz) Jewels: 31, with 20 gears and 4 ball bearings Power reserve: 36 hours Dial: Grade 5 titanium, 75 mm diameter, running on a jewel ball bearing with eccentric hour satellites on jewel ball bearings inclined at 9.75°; engraved indications hand-filled with white lacquer and Grade A Super-LumiNova. Emerald Green ALD coating on the T9 JWE, black PVD on the T9 JWB Case: Polished Grade 5 titanium, black-coated on the T9 JWB; domed sapphire crystal with internal anti-reflective coating; manual winding over 12° and setting via the caseback, rotating in both directions Measurements: 39 mm diameter, 11 mm thickness Components: 182 Weight: 42 grams including strap Water resistance: 1 ATM, splash resistance Strap: Soft calf leather, 20/18 mm, with titanium ardillon buckle Price: CHF 20,000 excluding taxes Availability: From 17 September 2026, via Ressence’s online store and selected retailers
