H. Moser & Cie’s latest builds on their most recent watchmaking philosophy. Doing away with anything and everything that can be done away with — even the brand’s own logo — leaving only the cardinal hour markers and the watch hands.

What happens, therefore, is that one of Moser’s prime identifying elements is given the spotlight: The Moser watch dial. In most instances, these tend to be Moser’s fantastic fumé dials. However, with their newest timepiece, Moser has now added to their dial making vocabulary with the substance known as Vantablack.^®

A quick Google search, and you’ll learn that Vantablack isn’t a pigment or color. Rather, it’s a material composed of meshed, hollow carbon nanotubes. It can be applied to surfaces using a process called chemical vapor deposition (CDV). Once coated, the black that we perceive the surface to take on, is a physical attribute of the material. Vantablack absorbs well over 99% of visible light. As a result, you don’t just see black. It feels like you’re staring through a window into the abyss.

The last time watchmaking saw the use of Vantablack was in a collaboration by the brand MCT with artist Anish Kapoor, resulting in the Sequential One — S110 Evo Vantablack. Now, Vantablack is first and foremost an industrial material, with its most known application being in telescopes, where its ability to limit stray light is used to manage interferences.

In itself, the material is owned and regulated by Surrey NanoSystems Limited, a chemicals company in the UK. Outside of industrial applications, and in all things pertaining to the use of the material within the arts, Surrey NanoSystems has an exclusive licensed agreement with Anish Kapoor’s studio.

MCT quite clearly worked with Anish Kapoor’s studio. And now, no doubt, Moser’s had to do the same.

With the Endeavour Perpetual Moon Concept, the Vantablack dial lends itself to possibly one of the best effects that we know and appreciate to be the “less-is-more” Moser dial. In this instance, to further amplify the visual effect of the darkness of Vantablack, the cardinal hour markers have been done away with.

What you have, therefore, is a deep, black dial that goes from the center to the edge. But owing to the name of the watch, the only thing that breaks the steady state of the Vantablack surface is the large moon phase indicator at 6 o’clock.

Enabled by Moser’s hand-wound HMC 801 Manufacture caliber, the moon phase complication is one of the most accurate out there. Moser boasts that here you should expect no more than a day’s deviation every 1,027 years.

If, however, you’re more in love with the moon phase complication and would rather own it on a more classically Moser fumé dial, then good news: The Endeavour Perpetual Moon Concept is also available in a 5N red gold version with a midnight-blue fumé dial.

Both instances of the watch will be issued in a limited run of just 50 pieces, priced at CHF 35,000.