Can a New Watch Have a Past?

September 27, 2026

NOMOS · GLASHÜTTE · 1990—

A new watch company appeared in Germany in 1990.

Its future would begin
by looking backwards.

1990

A New Company
in an Old Town

Germany was changing.

The Berlin Wall had fallen. Reunification was approaching.

And in Glashütte, a town whose name had been connected with watchmaking since the nineteenth century, another chapter was beginning.

Roland Schwertner founded NOMOS Glashütte.

It wasn't an old manufacture being revived.

It was new.

But the place wasn't.

And neither, as it turned out, were all of the ideas that would shape its watches.

1937

The Design
Goes Backwards

While researching an initial watch, Schwertner worked with graphic designer Susanne Günther.

In historical material they found a Glashütte version of a dial made by Weber & Baral of Pforzheim and supplied to A. Lange in 1937.

Clear numerals.
Fine lines.
Small seconds.
Space.

Günther didn't simply reproduce it.

She reworked the typography.

Adjusted the proportions.

Made an old idea contemporary.

Good design wasn't copied.
It was understood.

Bauhaus?

Not quite.

The word follows NOMOS everywhere.

But there were no Bauhaus watches.

The Bauhaus school existed from 1919 until 1933 and did not produce watches of its own. The deeper connection lies in the wider German tradition of objective, functional design, including the Deutscher Werkbund.

The distinction matters.

This isn't a story about putting a Bauhaus label on a watch.

It is about an idea:

Remove what isn't needed.
Improve what remains.

Form serves function.

And when the proportions are right, function can be beautiful.

1992

Tangente
Ludwig
Orion
Tetra

The first NOMOS collection arrived.

Hand-wound.

Stainless steel.

Mechanical watches intended for everyday life at prices intended to remain within reach.

Round.
Square.
Arabic numerals.
Roman numerals.
Indexes.

Different solutions to the same problem:

How much does a watch actually need?

Nothing
to Hide

Simple design is unforgiving.

Remove decoration and every remaining decision becomes visible.

The length of a hand.
The thickness of a line.
The position of an index.
The space between them.

A millimetre isn't empty simply because nothing has been printed there.

The space is part of the design.

That is why a NOMOS can initially appear simple.

Then you keep looking.

And the proportions begin doing the talking.

Orion

No Arabic numerals.
No Roman numerals.
Indexes.
Hands.
Small seconds.
Time.

Of the original NOMOS families, Orion may be the quietest.

And that makes it particularly difficult to get right.

There is almost nowhere for poor proportion to hide.

Nothing is there
without a reason.

Close-up of a NOMOS Orion showing its minimalist dial, blue hands, gold indexes and small seconds — *Orion. Where proportion, space and function become the design. Image: NOMOS Glashütte.*

Then One
Became Ours

Many years later, an Orion found its way onto the wrist of a watchmaker at Past2Present.

It was given to him for his 50th birthday by someone rather important to him.

He still wears it.

He still loves it.

During an ordinary working day it might share a bench with watches considerably older, rarer or more valuable than itself.

That doesn't matter.

Because somewhere along the way it stopped being simply an Orion.

It became his Orion.

Form
Function
Time

A design discovered in material from 1937.
Reconsidered in 1990.
Made into a new watch in 1992.

Then worn.
Marked.
Remembered.
Kept.

A designer can determine the form of a watch.

A watchmaker can look after the function.

But only its owner can give it a life.