L'Artisan x MINIM Yang

The L'Artisan x MINIM Yang 陽

Limited to 40 pieces worldwide. Our first collaboration with another watch brand.

Some watches are designed. This one was a conversation that lasted two years.

I met Chloe, the founder of MINIM, around two years ago. Two young founders, two young brands, the same stubborn idea that a small workshop can make something the big houses would never dare. We kept talking, kept comparing sketches, and at some point the question stopped being "should we?" and became "why haven't we yet?"

The Yang is the answer. Not a logo swap, not a colour variant. Two design languages, merged into one watch.

Two Signatures, One Dial

From MINIM comes everything that makes Chloe's watches instantly recognisable: her dial architecture with Chinese numerals and the distinctive hands found on her timepieces. From L'Artisan comes what we do best: the stone, the case and the movement.

Neither side gave way to the other. Her numerals frame my stone. My case carries her dial. East and West, London and Belgium, each half completing the other. That is where the name comes from. In Chinese philosophy, Yang 陽 is the bright side: warmth, light, energy. It felt like the only honest name for a watch born from two young spirits.

Rhodonite: The Rose Stone

The heart of the dial is genuine rhodonite, a natural manganese silicate whose name comes from the Greek rhodon, meaning rose. Its colour runs from soft pink to deep rose red, crossed by black veins of manganese oxide that formed as the stone aged in the earth. For centuries it was a stone of the Russian imperial court, carved for the tsars from deposits in the Ural Mountains.

Every slice is cut thin enough to sit under the hands of a watch, and no two dials share the same veining. Some are calm and almost uniformly pink. Others are wild, with dark rivers running through them. The stone decides; we simply frame it.

Around it sits a light mother of pearl outer ring. Where the rhodonite is dense and saturated, the mother of pearl is soft and luminous, catching the light differently at every angle. Warm stone, glowing frame. Yang, in material form.

Why Only Forty

Forty watches. Forty dials. Once they are spoken for, the Yang is closed. There will be no second batch.

Specifications

Movement

• HZ5000A micro-rotor automatic movement
• Micro-rotor design for a slim and elegant profile
• 28,800 bph (4 Hz)
• 42-hour power reserve
• Stop-seconds (hacking) and hand-winding capability

Case

• 38 mm stainless steel
• Domed sapphire crystal
• Sapphire exhibition caseback

Dial

• Genuine rhodonite centre
• Mother of pearl outer ring
• MINIM dial design with Chinese numerals
• MINIM signature hands
• Every dial unique in colour and veining

Strap

• Grey Suede
• Pink accents

Edition

• Limited to 40 pieces worldwide

More than a collaboration, the Yang is proof of what happens when two independents stop competing for attention and start building together. Every watch is assembled, finished and regulated by hand at our bench in Belgium.

But Yang never exists alone. Where there is light, there is shadow. Where there is Yang, there must be Yin.

More soon.