The Hong Kong Watch Auction: XVI takes place on May 13 and 14, at our new Asia headquarters in the West Kowloon Cultural District. The auction includes more than 200 of the world's finest watches. We'll be highlighting a number of the most interesting lots and stories featured in the sale over the next few weeks, including the Kiu Tai Yu Millenium "Fulfilled and Content" watch featured here.
– By Logan Baker
Kiu Tai Yu was the first Chinese watchmaker in the modern era to gain an international audience. His work in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s inspired an entire generation of pioneering young watchmakers and entrepreneurs – such as Behrens, another recent Indie Insider subject – to enter an industry that had long been dominated by Western Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan.
Kiu’s entirely self-taught career in watchmaking consists of a series of firsts. He’s considered the first watchmaker in Asia to build a tourbillon, which he completed in 1990, which made him the first Chinese watchmaker accepted by the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants (AHCI), a prestigous Swiss-based alliance dedicated to promoting the work and careers of independent watchmakers around the world. Building his own tourbillon wasn’t enough, so he ended up inventing his own unique construction in 1993 called the “mystery tourbillon,” which appears to operate without the use of either a cage or bridge. At some point in his career, he also found the time to self-publish a book named Time In Pocket in 1992 that detailed the many rare Chinese-market pocket watches he had collected in his life, as well as spotlighting a few of the tourbillon wristwatches he had already built.
Kiu Tai Yu unfortunately passed away a little more than two years ago, in February 2020, at the age of 73, after a lengthy illness that forced him to shutter his business a few years ago. He left behind a loving family and an enormous legacy that no individual watchmaker based in China is prepared to fill. His legacy is the reason I recently reached out to his daughter, Peony, to learn more about Kiu’s life and career. I wanted to know more about this legendary figure of watchmaking that, despite his cultural significance and watchmaking ability, had remained relatively under the radar for much of the Western world.
Interest in independent watchmakers all over the world has soared in recent years, unfortunately too late for Kiu to enjoy the attention, but his watches are still out there, existing as literal embodiment of Kiu’s watchmaking vision. The first appearance of one of Kiu’s watches at a PHILLIPS auction is set to take place during the Hong Kong Watch Auction: XVI, on May 24, 2023. It’s an exciting moment.
Only a handful of Kiu’s watches have ever turned up at an international auction house – including at Only Watch in 2005 – and this is the first example I can find coming up since 2015, which makes it an excellent opportunity to dig into Kiu’s history with the help of Peony.
Peony, I should mention, inherited her father’s interest and passion in watches. She spent eight years in the auction world, working in in director-level positions for two different auction houses in Hong Kong, and then joined the Swatch Group in China as a Vice President at Glashütte Original.
“I still remember learning how to repair and overhaul watches over the weekend while growing up,” she says. “He worked very hard seven days a week with my mom in the shop, so during the weekend I had to go learn how to help them.”
In The Beginning
Kiu Tai Yu was born on July 26, 1946, in Suzhou, a city to the West of Shanghai inside the Jiangsu province that was still in the process of recovering from damage suffered during the Second Sino-Japanese War while he was a child. His love for watches and watchmaking stemmed out of a boyhood discovery of a cheap clock at a local flea market that he was able to purchase and take home, where he spent countless hours disassembling it before putting it back together.
Kiu was initially assigned by the Chinese government to work in an industrial factory after finishing school, but he soon found his way to the Suzhou Watch Factory where was able to develop his early mechanical knowledge in practical and experiential ways.
Kiu married an Indonesian-Chinese woman named Lin Shengniang, an Indonesian-Chinese woman, and they eventually had a daughter, Peony. Gradual economic reforms in China that began in the late 1970s, and Lin’s status as a dual citizen, allowed the family to relocate to Hong Kong in 1980, which is where the foundation for Kiu’s new career began to take shape.
Kiu was able to find a new job working in repair at a small watch shop in a Hong Kong mall where he continued to develop his skills and expertise.
“He learned how to engrave and work a lathe by himself,” Peony says. “He would buy and collect antique pocket watches because they were cheaper, so he could take them apart and learn how they work. He would purchase broken watches and figure out how to make them work again. He never studied at any watchmaking schools like the people in Switzerland.”
He ended up working at the store for about a decade, developing his skills, until the owner of the store decided to leave Hong Kong, closing the store down. Kiu took the store’s closure as an opportunity to open up his own repair shop in the same mall, where he could run his own business. In addition to his repair work, he soon found an opportunity to buy and sell vintage and pre-owned watches to shoppers.
This is the shop where Peony learned how to repair a watch. It was Kiu’s home away from home, and it’s where he would eventually find out about the formation of the AHCI in 1985 by Swiss-based watchmakers Svend Andersen and Vincent Calabrese.
“He heard that if he created one watch by himself, all by himself, he could join the AHCI,” Peony says. “He wanted to join the group, so he suddenly started to create his own watches. He bought the tools, a lathe, and continued to work in his small shop every day. That's how he started his watchmaking career.”
The 1990s
Kiu Tai Yu visited his first Basel fair in 1990, where he was able to handle a tourbillon wristwatch for the first time in his life. It was love at first sight, and Kiu returned to Hong Kong with a goal: to create his own tourbillon.
“He wanted to challenge his skills,” Peony says. “Everybody says the tourbillon is very accurate, and he wanted to challenge himself by only using basic tools to create a very accurate watch. He didn’t have a CNC machine or a super-accurate computer to help. He just wanted to prove himself. He bought some more old tools and learned how to use them, challenging himself to learn new techniques to create a very accurate tourbillon.”
Kiu was successful. The following year he introduced his first tourbillon wristwatch, and by 1992, it had helped him finally earn a spot among his peers in the AHCI. Those two achievements weren’t just new for Kiu, they were a first for any person of Asian descent.
Kiu’s second take on a tourbillon came in 1993, when he developed the perplexing “Mystery Tourbillon” that appeared to rotate without the support of either a tourbillon cage or bridge. The secret was simple – the cage had turned into a small but supportive platform on the underside of the tourbillon, and an invisible sapphire crystal plate kept the tourbillon in position from the top. Kiu ended up receiving patents for his Mystery Tourbillon in China, Switzerland, and the United States, but in more recent years, a few different major-label Swiss brands have utilized a similar approach in their own tourbillons, indicating just how novel and compelling Kiu’s idea was.
Kiu was a watchmaker and a father, but he was also interested in history. He viewed China’s history in timekeeping to be just as important as Europe’s, and he wanted to share his perspective and knowledge, writing magazine articles on topics such as the early production of clepsydra water clocks in China. The books Kiu published also served as an exercise in highlighting Chinese horology, highlighting the artistry of the original vintage Chinese enamel pocket watches in his collection, followed by a showcase of his own personal watchmaking developments, like his tourbillons.
“He was very proud of his work,” Peony says. “He wanted to create a new watch every year to show at Basel. He was always very happy to meet new people during the fair. He could talk all day long, and even when he came back to Hong Kong, he’d still keep talking about everything. I could tell he was very proud of his achievements.”
Entering A New Millenium
Kiu Tai Yu used the turn of the millennium as inspiration for a number of his creations in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He introduced a watch with off-centered timekeeping displays and a large tourbillon aperture in 1999 that was cased completely in platinum. He named “The Joy Of The Millennium.” A year later, in 2000, Kiu introduced a unique rectangular time-only watch with a self-winding movement known as the “New Millenium.”
The watch included in the Hong Kong Watch Auction: XVI is from a series of 20 watches created in 2003 called “Millenium – Fulfilled and Content.” The 35mm 18k white gold watch has a stepped bezel and downturned lugs with a smooth polish rendered throughout. The caseband at nine o’clock has a long “Kiu Tai Yu” signature highlighted in red, and the side of each lug features a lovely hand-engraved scroll motif that is filled with red enamel.
The dial, like most of Kiu’s timepieces, is executed with heavy Chinese design influences, from the use of red to the Chinese characters appearing around and inside of the timekeeping register on the lower half of the dial. This portion of the dial is almost entirely elevated, resting on a three-dimensional yellow-gold plaque in the shape of is in the shape of a sycee, a type of ingot used as a currency in Imperial China. Chinese blessings are written out on the plaque, reading “Best Wishes and Good Luck” and “Millenium Jubilee.”
The top section of the dial features a non-tourbillon exposed escapement with a bright shade of red visible in the background and a pair of yellow gold arms in a similar scroll format supporting the balance wheel. Another Kiu Tai Yu signature is visible to the left of the visible regulating organ, and the specific model number out of 20 (the example in our Hong Kong auction is lucky number eight) as well as the individual year of production (2003).
The automatic movement inside has a white gold rotor featuring the same highly detailed level of enamel workmanship in red. It’s surrounded by relief engraving highlighting much of the same information shared on the dial. It also runs in 25 jewels and measures 25.6mm in diameter, leaving plenty of room for the 35mm diameter case made of white gold. The watch comes from the collection of its original owner and is in excellent overall condition with its original presentation box.
Kiu was a brilliant man and a prolific thinker, but he was only ever able to complete a small number of pieces in his career. Peony even mentions that he likely didn’t complete making all 20 pieces of the “Millenium – Fulfilled and Content” watches, with a strong possibility of only 10 examples being created before Kiu moved on to something else.
Kiu suffered from an unexpected stroke in 2007, which severly limited his ability to work until he was eventually forced to close his business for good before passing away from its complications in early 2020. Kiu was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Art of Tourbillon exhibition hosted in Shanghai in 2016.
“He left us two years ago,” Peony says. “In his short life, he contributed all his time and spirit to watches. When I was young, I always asked him if he wanted to go travel or go on a holiday, but it was very hard to get him out for a normal dinner; he spent all of his time in his small shop. One day he told me that he felt the most happiness when he was on the watchmakers’ bench. That’s why he would always rish back to his shop and bench – it’s what made him the happiest.”
You can learn more about and register to bid in the Hong Kong Watch Auction: XVI by visiting our online catalog.
About Phillips In Association With Bacs & Russo
The team of specialists at PHILLIPS Watches is dedicated to an uncompromised approach to quality, transparency, and client service. Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo holds the world record for the most successful watch auction, with its Geneva Watch Auction: XIV having realized $74.5 million in 2021. Over the course of 2021 and 2022, the company sold 100% of the watches offered, a first in the industry, resulting in the highest annual total in history across all the auction houses at $227 million.
About Logan Baker
Logan has spent the past decade working in watch-focused media, reporting on every aspect of the industry. He joined Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo at the start of 2023 as the department's Senior Editorial Manager. He splits his time between New York and Geneva.
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