Why everyone’s talking about this little-known watch
Watch brand Anoma breaks all the rules of watchmaking and has become a cult hit with collectors
MATTEO VIOLET-VIANELLO is not your typical watch start-up guy.
With roots in both France and Italy, he grew up surrounded by jewellery, cinema, sculpture and architecture – a cultural backdrop that still shapes his creative outlook.
A former Sotheby’s Watch Department specialist and member of the team at vintage dealer A Collected Man, he has handled rare-shaped watches worth five figures.
But when it came time to launch his own brand, Anoma, he looked well beyond traditional horology.
The result was the A1: a softly sculpted, near-triangular timepiece inspired not by dive watches or field watches, but by the free-form furniture of Charlotte Perriand, the modernist sculpture of Brâncuși and the sweeping architecture of Niemeyer.
“If people are telling you ‘no’, that’s a good reason to try,” Violet-Vianello told Esquire last year of the challenges he faced designing a non-round watch where even the glass, gaskets and crown placement had to be rethought from scratch.
The original A1, with its lacquered blue dial and integrated strap, launched to unexpected acclaim.
That was followed in March by the A1 Slate – an exercise in minimalist contrast.
This version swapped colour for texture: a vertically brushed dial engraved with a triangular pattern, lacquered in black and polished to create a dynamic interplay of matt and gloss.
“Only one in four dials makes it through production,” Violet-Vianello told us. “It’s brutally hard to get right.”
Still, the Slate model offered a more distilled take on the A1 design philosophy – bold in silhouette, restrained in execution.
Now comes the A1 Optical – arguably Anoma’s most visually ambitious watch yet.
Its dial is engraved with fifty offset triangles, forming an illusion that shifts as light hits from different angles.
Sandblasted then hand-polished, the design draws influence from optical artists such as Bridget Riley and Ferruccio Gard.
The sculptural stainless-steel case – 39mm by 38mm – is paired with a grey Italian leather strap and powered by the dependable Swiss-made Sellita SW100 automatic movement, with a 38-hour reserve.
Limited to 300 individually numbered pieces – half in silver, half in copper – each A1 Optical ships with a pen-plotted artwork by optical artist Adam Fuhrer, numbered to match.
Priced at £2,200 (approx. AUD$4500), it sits toward the top of the microbrand world, yet as with all things Anoma, the value lies not in technical specs but in creative intent.
“Anoma looks beyond watchmaking to find essential beauty,” says Violet-Vianello.
“We want each piece to feel like a small sculpture – for the wrist.”
With demand already tenfold over supply, the A1 Optical is less a follow-up and more of a statement.
One year in, Anoma is already shaping the shaped-watch conversation.
This story originally appeared on Esquire UK.
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