TWO COLLECTORS, ONE CHRONICLE: THE POLEROUTER’S STORY RETOLD
An auspicious meeting
The spirit of the Polerouter, a signature timepiece by Universal Genève, is captured in vibrant detail in a retrospective book by authors Andrew Willis and Mattia Mazzucchi.
When Andrew Willis met Mattia Mazzucchi in London in the spring of 2019 to sell him a vintage Polerouter, neither anticipated how their meeting would evolve into a collaborative journey, nor the broader events on the horizon that would shape their connection and impact the world in general.
The two U.K.-based Universal Genève aficionados bought and sold watches in a community of collectors. It was their third meeting. The two were familiar with one another but not overly so. While Willis works in finance and Mazzucchi as a yacht designer, their professional pursuits were complimentary, though they did not necessarily come from overlapping worlds.
Theirs was instead an acquaintance forged in the social den of watch collectors and connoisseurs, among those who share an affection for Universal Genève. They may never have met if not for the timepieces they loved to wear on their wrists.
Willis recalled that auspicious meeting. When he handed over the Polerouter he was there to sell to Mazzucchi, “I made a comment like, ‘That’s a shame, because I was going to put that in my book.’”
Mazzucchi confessed that one of the reasons that he wanted to meet Willis that day was to suggest they write a book together.
“The coincidence was too much,” Willis said.
Inspired by Gérald Genta
Thus began a four-year odyssey to craft the perfect coffee table tome dedicated to the Polerouter, a signature timepiece by Universal Genève which Mazzucchi professes was also the first watch he ever bought for himself.
Their book, The Polerouter, is a monument to the watch that was first created for Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) for the first-ever commercial transpolar flight from Copenhagen to Los Angeles on November 15, 1954.
The duo never sought a publisher because they never wanted to compromise on their book’s quality. It is the sort of attitude and creative drive the Polerouter’s visionary designer, Gérald Genta, would have appreciated.
The result is as meticulous and methodical as they are, both for the count of reference numbers and the designer backdrops for each watch—120 in total—a tribute as well to their divergent professional interests.
‘A Covid project’
What the new collaborators hadn’t anticipated was a global pandemic that would grind much of the world—as well as their efforts—to a halt, if only temporarily.
The move to craft this unique volume largely unfolded over the months and years that tipped into the Covid-19 pandemic. It was a time when travel was forbidden and face-to-face meetings were not only a rarity but a health risk, especially in the months before a vaccine was available.
But for the collaborators, the pandemic facilitated the project because it provided the two professionals with the luxury of time to finally delve into their passion without distraction. “We were spending hours a day looking for watches,” Willis said.
Analytically-minded Willis seized the moment to catalog the complete Polerouter collection. He sought to match reference numbers to original watches, to fill in the gaps of history and knowledge numerically. He calls himself “a sort of completist,” who became obsessive about decrypting reference numbers.
He spent months wondering, “What do all these reference numbers mean? And why is this reference different to that one?” His ultimate conclusion grew out of his hypothesis. “I thought we could catalog it, and it turned out we could.”
“WE WERE SPENDING HOURS A DAY
LOOKING FOR WATCHES.”
ANDREW WILLIS
Meanwhile, Mazzucchi drew on his experience in yacht design, to source the more than 100 luxurious background materials on which the duo photographed the watches. Mazzucchi noted that some of these textures, that included straw marquetry, aged pewter and églomisé glass, “would be used for special furniture pieces.”
Mazzucchi designed the woven-cotton cover as an homage to the watch that inspired them, a configuration of three circular lines that represents what is arguably the Polerouter’s most recognizable feature—its inner bezel—but also resembles the coil of a vintage film strip. It’s an evocative and fitting design for a time when we were all prisoners of time.
“I think now we forget very quickly what we have just all been through and what made the project possible was the time afforded by the pandemic,” Mazzucchi noted wistfully.
The world reopens and a chapter is closed
Collectors were also exceptionally open to loaning their timepieces for the book’s photography, especially as people hungered for a social life again after so long without.
During one trip to New York, Willis and Mazzucchi were hosted by the retailer Analog:Shift and together they put on an event where they invited Polerouter fans to bring in their watches to be included in the book.
Willis recounted, “Somebody turned up with a shoebox full.”
There were trips as well to Brussels, Paris, Geneva, and Milan, where the pair again benefited from the largesse of collectors. From Tokyo, one collector provided the Japanese advertisements that appear in the book.
While much has transformed in the last five years, Willis and Mazzucchi remain grateful both for the unprecedented community outpouring and for their own collaboration and friendship. As for the book, the two perfectionists eventually had to draw a line and put it out into the world. The revival of Universal Genève was a development that dovetailed fortuitously with the publication’s 2023 release.
“We did take our time to get it out at the right time,” Mazzucchi said. “And then we felt like, yeah, now it is ready.”
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To purchase The Polerouter book for the special anniversary price of £150, visit thepolerouter.com
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