Meteorite Dial Laurent Ferrier Galet Traveller

Meteorites are perpetually traveling, searching around through spacetime before eventually striking a larger body like Earth. Now, there are surprisingly few elegant-refined leaning GMT offerings. There are endless GMT/travel watches which scream, ‘I’m a professional doing serious things, manly tool watch things.’ But really only a handful that offer old-style Pan-Am easy smile and sophistication with your journey. The Laurent Ferrier Galet Traveller is one of those latter travel watches, much more Patek 2597 than Rolex 6542. And it’s never made more sense or created more fawning than with this blue meteorite dial, made in 15 examples and never really advertised.

This dial is very unusual for LF on a few fronts. First, the material: taken from one of the oldest known meteorites, a piece of Muonionalusta, which struck remote Scandinavia 1 million BCE. Then it’s treated to a galvanic bath to bring out all the veining and fractal structures inherent to the stone. But the indices are different as well, not Roman numerals and not the usual applied spears, but elongated hand-painted markers. It’s a hard dial not to fawn for. The case is traditional LF pebble form, except the pushers. This case has two pushers on the left, rather unusually, which adjust the hour hand forwards or backwards, while the aperture a 9 indicates home time. It’s an elevated take on what Patek would call the Travel Time.

Moreover, the Traveller has Ferrier’s natural escapement with a double-direct impulse, one of the great feats of his early watchmaking. The finishing is spectacular, particularly on the micro-rotor bridge which is designed to resemble a flamingo standing on one leg. Laurent Ferrier uses La Fabrique du Temps to cut his bridges and larger parts, but each is then finished by his team in his workshop. The black polish balance cock work is beyond reproach and just study the rotor guilloché.

Anything that reminds me of the 2597 almost gets a free pass, but the Traveller has all the technical chops to back up its flash meteorite exterior. And while I bring up the 2597, there’s nothing like this from Patek Philippe today. Think of it as a GMT-Master that’s into fine tailoring. I always say that for the truly great watches, you don’t get to choose to buy them. They choose you when they surface. This is in that category.

This example appears only lightly worn, I see small superficial wear on the high-polish case sections and bezel. It is lovely. It comes from a new retailer out of Singapore.