Chinese manufacturing is evolving from a focus on components and inexpensive white label watches into an industry capable of advanced manufacturing coupled with brand building.
One of the biggest producers in the country has been Dandong Watches, based in the port city of Dandong in the northeast of China, where watches and components have been produced since 1957.
As well as manufacturing at scale for other brands, Dandong Watches also developed its own marque, Peacock, which have come to symbolise tradition and innovation in exceptional timepieces for the Chinese business.
Effectively, Peacock is the poster child for the most advanced horology that watchmakers in Dandong have been delivering since 1957 and kicked into high gear with the introduction in 2003 of its first watch featuring an in house tourbillon movement.
Ten years later, in 2013, Peacock went one step further with the creation of a double tourbillon timepiece.
Both single and double tourbillon watches continue to be made to this day, with ever-rising refinements to the design and architecture of the Peacock pieces.
The latest addition to the Peacock flock is the Avant Series Black Hole, a collection with a tourbillon at the heart of its dial.
As its name suggests, the watches are inspired by the mystical gravity of black holes and their intersection with spacetime. Peacock says it placed the tourbillon at the centre of the dial to bring this cosmic confluence on the wrist.
Peacock Dandong manufacture is capable of producing its own tourbillon movements at a cost that allows the Avant Series Black Hole watches to retail at just $3,580.
Just as impressive for a tourbillon movement, it has a power reserve of 5 days thanks, in part, to the lightness of tourbillon carriage, which is made from titanium.
The hand wound movements are housed in 46mm steel cases and power central hours and minutes hands that are modeled after black holes and simulate the rotation of multidimensional spacetime.
Sunken dials have an inner ring made from forged carbon. They are circled by resin internal bezels in colours that match rubber straps in black, blue, red, green, orange and white.
