http://www.thewatchbox.com/watches/corum
The Corum Bubble. You either love it or loathe it. But do you really understand it? Born from the mind of late Corum owner Severin Wunderman, the Bubble might be the most distinctive luxury watch design of all time.
More than a novelty, the 44mm stainless steel Corum Bubble is the epitome of the luxury watch ideal: a timepiece designed exclusively for enjoyment.
If the Corum Bubble seems impossibly familiar to collectors otherwise unversed in the Chaux-de-Fonds brand, there’s a logical reason. Inspired by the towering acrylic crystal of the 1950s Rolex Deep Sea Special, Wunderman in 2000 designed a watch that reproduced the extreme aesthetic of the Rolex “Challenger Deep” dive watch using modern sapphire crystal.
Taller than loaded Longhorn Burger at the Texas State Fair, the 19mm thick Corum Bubble can attribute all but 7mm of that girth to its crystal alone. While most sapphire crystals fail to achieve the charming refraction and optical distortion effects of vintage acrylic, the extreme camber and thickness of the Bubble’s er, “bubble,” creates wild illusions and reflections when viewed off-center.
Highly oblique angles aside, the Corum Bubble is a supremely legible watch in bright, low, or no-light conditions. The crystal acts as a monster magnifying glass that obviates the need for reading glasses. Huge dot hour indices and applied Arabic numerals yield clarity and ease that put a Rolex Submariner to shame and can give even Panerai’s largest Luminor a run for its money. A date window completes the display; Wundermann cleverly encapsulates its aperture in the loop of the numeral “6.”
Online forum lore often fails to capture the true character of the Corum Bubble; while undeniably a fashion statement, this is no fashion watch. The Bubble Automatic features a screw-down crown, 200-meter (660-foot) water resistance, and a rugged automatic ETA 2892-A2 caliber. If that movement sounds familiar, it’s because the same device has powered watches from the likes of illustrious marques including Ulysse Nardin, Tudor, DeWitt, and Omega; the 2892-A2 powered every automatic Seamaster Professional Diver 300M worn by Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.
Is the 44mm steel Corum Bubble a sports watch? Undoubtedly. It’s automatic, stainless steel, highly water resistant, crystal clear to read under any circumstances; the Bubble boasts the mother of all shatter-proof shields. Long conversations with brand representatives from any watchmaking house will yield all manner of horror stories concerning consumer misuse and abuse of the product; when pressed, Corum sources universally fail to recall a single instance in which a client managed to shatter the sapphire of a Bubble. Busted-crystal dive watches from larger brands are never more than a quick eBay search away…
Distinctive, compelling, and controversial, the Corum Bubble is a true original. It’s also rare. As a subset of production from a firm that builds no more than 10,000 watches in a good year, the Bubble is a special watch for that reason alone.
But let’s be honest; the Corum Bubble is defined by a landmark look like nothing else in modern high horology. This is a machine for the self-assured, raffish, and irreverent connoisseur of fine watches. See it in high-resolution images and take it home on www.thewatchbox.com.
Video and content by Tim Mosso
