There aren’t many family-owned and -operated brands in today’s watchmaking. And they all keep their stories to themselves. But at the same time, a watch brand cannot be separated from its founder’s personal narrative. And the latter often becomes the basis for a new product. The World Is Yours Dual Time Zone is at the crossroads of this unique set of parameters: it’s personal but modest, it’s family-centered yet universal and it’s a great, moving story. Except this time, everyone involved is alive, not some inhabitant of a Swiss plateau a century ago.
The gift
The year is 1978. Mr. Nison Arabov is a father of five, including just the one boy, Jacob. They live in Tashkent, that fabled city halfway between East and West, in the middle of the great Asian steppe. Mr. Arabov owns a Wakmann timepiece with two time zones. It has two dials, caught in the middle of a gilded world map, centered on the Atlantic ocean. At age 13, as a rite of passage, Jacob receives that watch from his father’s hands. Forty-five years later, Jacob Arabo decides to pay tribute to his father. The man who moved his entire family from the USSR to the USA. The man who made him understand that the world is an open possibility. The man who gave him his values and also gave him that watch. The one that sparked the will in Jacob Arabo to make his own timepieces, under his own name, the way he envisions them. And he went on to do exactly that.
The function
The World Is Yours Dual Time Zone is more than an intention and a tribute. It’s a card-carrying Jacob & Co. timepiece. Like the original, it has two subdials, one for each time zone. Each one is totally independent from the other, down to the minute. Which is, oddly enough, still not the norm in contemporary GMTs. It’s got a paradoxical seconds indication that is small like a small seconds display, but it’s dead in the center of the dial. And it’s shaped like a compass, which makes sense since it’s located in the middle of a world map.
The world
The World is Yours Dual Time Zone has a dial the likes of which we see every few years or so. It’s domed like the globe it represents. The sapphire crystal above it follows its ample curvature. On that dial is a world map. The continents, mountains, plains and shorelines are clear-cut and three-dimensional. They’re covered in rose gold, the same material as the 43mm case. The rest of the dial is made of the three subdials and of a wide expanse of blue lacquer that represents our oceans. In a way, this one is an unusual Jacob & Co. It doesn’t have an extra-large case, but the brand is moving away from those anyhow. It doesn’t have a tourbillon, but that’s not all the brand does. It doesn’t have baguette-cut diamonds, but let’s see what the future brings. What it does have is heart and craft. Craft because the dial is highly ornate and extremely well executed. Heart because that’s where every genuine creation, in fact, comes from.
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