Did the designer of the electrics, Richard Arbib, also design the cases for the asymmetric mechanicals?
RR: Presumably. There’s no real way to know exactly which watches he designed except where the drawings still exists. He did hundreds, maybe thousands, of drawings for Hamilton, and obviously, the vast majority were never made into anything. But the idea was that he would just crank them out. The stylists (Hamilton had their own stylists) would take an Arbib design and run with it. I do think however, that the fundamental inspiration for just about all of those watches was Arbib. WatchTime: Did Arbib design other objects, like cars, televisions and radios? RR: Oh yeah. Arbib worked for three years with GM Styling, but most of his work was independent. After the war he worked with Harley Earl. An article in Elle Decor about future shock says that he designed everything from clock radios to convertibles. There’s also an article in Art and Antiques that says, “He stretched his creativity to encompass more than three hundred design categories, from vacuum cleaners to ocean liners.” He’s re
