or: Those were the days...
Here is a great story that Desmond Teo from Singapore sent me.
Credit
is also due to Dan Komar.
Last update: pictures
of two Sandwatch prototypes and two more interesting prototypes.
In 1991, Robert Casagrande, a wealthy Swiss souvenir shop owner and a small team of Swatch enthusiasts established the first International auction for Swatch. He wanted more than a simple auction, more like a multi-day event complete with organized dinner, traders bourse and of course a quite glamorous auction with many rare Swatches and also plenty of unusual prototypes. Additionally, his team decided to devise a multi-year theme to go along with the specially created event "Timepiece" that they would create each year. They never really told anyone about this theme until it became evident in the third year.
The first watch was called the Big Flat. The concept of Fire
was to take actual Swatch dummies and smoosh them under
pressure
and heat to create a unique looking piece of art. The concept was
primarily
that of Klaus Zaugg, another big collector and artist and photographer,
and very close friend of Robert Casagrande. So... with concept in hand,
they devised a method to smoosh the watch in just such a way as to
create
a unique look, then mount it with a magnet onto a signed plinth (black
acrylic board base). Each plinth was signed and numbered by the creator
Klaus Zaugg. Robert Casagrande has a Bonaparte Big Flat given to him by
Klaus Zaugg. Below is a picture of Big Flat #182/444,
with a melted Tutti (GW700,
1990).
Click image to enlarge!
For the 2nd auction in 1992, the theme was
Earth. It
was the Sand
watch and they got Franco Bossisio, then boss of Swatch Italia, to
create for them casings that had no middle section. It was not a Swatch
casing, but another plastic watch similar to Swatch and also made by
SMH.
They also had very tiny sand clocks made in different colors of sand.
The
main color was white. Lesser quantities of red, green, yellow and blue
were made,with blue being the rarest.
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The 3rd year watch (1993) was the last one designed in total by Klaus. It was the Wind watch. Once again they used an open casing, this time of special color, and included to pinwheels that rotated in opposite directions. These too were is special colors and were sold in sets as well as individual pieces. The pictures below show the VIP version with four watches in one box, normally, the box contains only one watch.
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Additionally some few odd (prototype) colorations
were made as one offs, around 25 total pieces. Robert Casagrande signed
a prototype color wind watch for Daniel J Komar.
The 4th and final year (1994) of the Luzern auction saw the
completion of
the
4 year series with Water watch:
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This was created in
memorial
to Klaus Zaugg who had tragically died as the result of a minor gunshot
wound to his leg in a robbery attempt, then died as a result of the
medications
given to him at the hospital. The concept had been Klaus', but the
implementation
was finalized by Robert Casagrande. Robert had been in a lawsuit that
entire
year brought on by Swatch over his Sand watch from the 2nd year, as
part
of the terms of settlement, Robert had to agree that after the 94
auction
he would have no more auctions and do no more non-swatch swatches. It
was
pretty much the end of the major Swatch era in Switzerland and brought
with it the loss of interest from many collectors and especially those
in Switzerland. Prices also started to drop and no other auctioneers
were
interested in doing any more low-end actions, save the one last-ditch
effort
by Rudolf Mangish in Zurich.
There is a price package for the Auction event, according to the
Auction
catalogue. It is SFR333 which includes: 1 Auction catalogue, Fondue -
Dinner,
Entrance for Bourse , 1 Pin, Entrance to "S"-Watch Party, Auction
- Cocktail & Auction watch.
Recently in 2006, some prototypes and one-off's by Klaus Zaugg
surfaced on ebay. There are some nice and interesting pieces
among them. Here are the pictures:
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These pictures show that Klaus was a real artist! Here
are two more interesting Zaugg prototypes:
Thanks to Markus Strobel for some pictures.
Next room: Luzern Access to Space event in '96