Hands-On with the Prototype Love 1 Watch

Regular readers who have been with Horolonomics for a while may well recognize the name Lovell Hunter.

Dial close-up of Lovell Hunter's Love 1 prototype watch.

I've posted a few articles about Lovell and his career in watchmaking, you can find those here and here and here. The TLDR from those posts is that Lovell is a professional watchmaker who worked, for many years, in the service center of a major Swiss brand. Recently he struck out on his own and founded his own independent brand, Love Hunter watches. His workshop is in Connecticut and he has worked with apprentices in the past.

A good number of weeks ago, a watch event in New York City showcasing independent watchmakers crossed my feed. It's called Indies.NYC. MAD Editions, Kross Studio, Ondrej Berkus and a number of other brands participated alongside Love Hunter Watches.

Lovell texted me now and then to share his progress on the development of his first watch.

The Instagram photo which alerted me to Lovell's progress. Used with permission of Tim Jackson.

But I was blown away when I saw a post from Indies.NYC featuring a near-complete Love Hunter timepiece. I had no idea he was that close to finishing a prototype, one which he has named the Love 1 . I reached out to congratulate him and he invited me back to his workshop for another visit. I'll share a few details and pictures from what I learned.

First was that Lovell has offered at least one class on watchmaking while he finishes his prototype. He wanted his class to differ in that he wanted students to experience machining and he showed me an example of the final work product.

An example of the finished product from Lovell's machining class. The work is roughly the size of a CD or small dinner plate.

It sounded like a very successful experience for teacher and students.

Lovell shared that, at the Indies.NYC event, he received feedback that the apeture for the jump hour complication, and the hour font, were potentially not legible, particularly for those with "high mileage" eyes (I am one of those people). He took the feedback to heart, returned to his workshop, and began to alter the designs for his watch. This is no small feat given the fact that there just is not a lot of free space on a reasonably sized watch dial. Lovell's process illustrates one of the strengths of independent watchmaking: agility.

A large print of the Love 1 prototype movement design drawing. It is framed on the wall of Lovell's workshop.

In a larger manufacture, it would no doubt take more time to re-design, re-engineer, and re-prototype a watch. Lovell doesn't have anyone in his workshop to help with this work, but he also doesn't need to spend time convincing others of the proper direction for his first timepiece. Lovell seemed happy with his solution, though, and he was well on his way toward building the redesigned components.

I have to say that I loved seeing Lovell's prototype in the metal. I'd heard about his plans for the timepiece and seen components of it in the early stage of his work, but seeing a complete protype is really a large leap when it comes to understanding his vision. The protype I saw is in brass but Lovell plans to offer his finished product in titanium.

The watch is designed as a jump-hour regulator. Lovell embraced a lateral asymmetry in the positioning of the blued large minute hand, blued subsidiary seconds hand and jump hour window.

Dial side of the Love 1 prototype.

In some ways, the Lange 1 Outsize Date is a design cousin to Lovell's dial layout, with an anchoring aperture in the "northeast" part of the dial and hand pinions to the west-southwest and south-southwest of the apeture. This kind of layout creates "free space." In the case of the Lange 1, this space is occupied by a power reserve indicator. Lovell has an additional degree of freedom to work with as a result of this free space. Lovell's dial layout has the added benefit that the jump hour window is never blocked by a hand (credit to Brandon Moore of SJX for pointing out, on a podcast episode, that certain designs have this advantage).

The seconds and minute tracks echo a design we see in the Patek Philippe reference 3796, for example, with larger "dots" at increments of five and smaller dots at all other increments. Lovell elected to "blue" the dots-at-five. These are heat-treated, Lovell does not use any paint or pigment on his dial. The blue for his brand mark on the dial is achieved through a sandwich design. The logo is first milled out of the dial so that an anterior blued metal component can be visible through the dial.

The dial arrangement is rounded out with engraved concentric circles originating from the minute and seconds pinions.

The Love 1 prototype movement as seen through the watch's display caseback.

Lovell's engraving work is also on display through the crown, which is knurled. The watch bezel is stepped while the lugs are angular. The case is finished with circular brushwork.

Lovell's prototype movement is visible through a display caseback. Three rubies reside on a 3/4 plate while the balance wheel is held in place by a bridge. The movement components are finished with anglage and straight brushwork on flat surfaces.

Another view of the Love 1 prototype movement as seen through the watch's display caseback.

Lovell also employs a unique "snake eyes" (aka spanner drilled) screw design rather than the more common straight-slotted screw we typically see in mechanical watch movements (two exceptions are the slotted screws visible from the dial side). None other than Kari Voutilainen, in his CSW watch series, employs similar screws from the "tamper proof" family on the bezel and caseback(in Voutilainen's cushion-shaped case rendering the screws have three holes rather than two).

Conclusion

It has been a true honor to visit with Lovell and witness his successes as one of a handful of watchmakers in America who diligently work to master the wide array of skills required by independent watchmaking. Lovell shared that he now has four orders on his books for delivery in September of 2026. As I learn more about the development of his final product I plan to post updates here on Horolonomics, so stay tuned!

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