Love Has No Other Desire

There were a couple of things that Nousseïma Baraket (founder of Buci Watches), after encountering one pink quartz watch too many, set out to do. The main one was to create a watch she was actually excited to wear. The other was to pay tribute to her favorite pastime: reading. Growing up with her nose perpetually in a book, she got her love of it from her mother, who indirectly inspired her watches.

Her mother, a Tunisian immigrant to France who never had the chance to better her own education, took it upon herself to drag Nousseïma to libraries as a child, adamant that her daughter have better opportunities at education than she did. Just so was the seed sown, and a wildflower grew in its place.

Channeling that same tenacity of Tunisian heritage, Nousseïma tells me now how difficult it was to achieve the parchment-like effect on her artisanal watch dials. “It gives me great pleasure when people are surprised it’s not real paper. It’s actually embossed metal, and it took thirteen months to perfect.”

That’s not the only detail I find striking about these pieces. Many of these details are even that much more striking in person. The personalized font for the indices was hand-drawn by a French calligrapher. These same indices vary in size, sloping to achieve a half-moon shadow. The hands are slim, half circles that create the shape of a fountain pen nib each time they meet on the dial. The slightly oval-shaped bezel is reminiscent of an inkwell. The size, similar to that of fellow French brands (the Baltic Prismic stone dials and the Serica 7505s), has more presence on the wrist than one might immediately assume, at a seemingly petite 36mm, with a lug-to-lug of 46mm. To whom it may concern, the movement sports a dazzling Sellita SW-219-1, deliberately chosen for it’s manual wind.

I am certain that Nousseïma, an avid R&B enjoyer, hip-hop dancer, and motorcyclist, could not have envisioned the life she was carving out for herself when she set out on this journey of creating a watch that she, a female watch collector, could enjoy. She admits she had no idea how much work and stress she was getting herself into. But love has no other desire but to fulfill itself, and in the poetic anecdotes of Buci Watches, I see more than a tribute to reading. I look at the sides of the case, lined to resemble the pressed pages of a book, and I spy with my little eye— a loving tribute to her mother.

Buci Watches is completely crowdfunded, and the kickstarter for her newest line, “Nouvelle” (shown above) ends November 15th.