Aera is the (brain)child of a marriage of two creative entrepreneurs steeped in the world of watchmaking. Jas Minhas and Olof Larsson first met at a watch party in Sweden in the early 2000s when they both worked with Marc Newson, the industrial designer who had launched a watch company of his own, Ikepod. The two bonded over their interest in timepieces and design.
Minhas had grown up the son of a Punjabi immigrant who opened a watch retailer in Birmingham in the UK. ‘My dad arrived in the city in the ’60s – he served in the RAF and then worked for Triumph and H Samuel the jeweller,’ he explains. ‘He went on to be a distributor for many watch brands.’ Meanwhile, Larsson’s family owns the Nymans Ur 1851 stores, the eminent seller of luxury watches in Sweden established, as the name states, nearly two centuries ago.
Over decades, the friends talked of starting a watch company together, founded on the principles of minimalist design and great value for money. Finally, in 2018, they bit the bullet and Aera was born.
The vision is simple: to design and make handsome watches in editions of 300, pooling the experience these two have garnered over the years and aiming for the more affordable end of the market. It is, in short, a way to give customers who want something a bit different a limited-edition, well-designed quality watch for a good price. Each piece is individually numbered, and, as Minhas says, is ‘designed to be repairable so it will endure for multiple lifetimes’.
Typical is the M-1 Blackbird, a classic military-style field watch with Aera’s modern design aesthetic, in which you can discern a gentle nod to the (now decommissioned) USAF long-range reconnaissance stealth airplane, the Lockheed SR-71, nicknamed “Blackbird”, with which the timepiece shares its hue. With a 904L PVD stainless-steel case it will resist corrosion and the Super-LumiNova Grade X1 fluorescent application, executed by hand, illuminates the markers and watch hands as well as the subdial’s track when light is low. The effect of this blue glow from the black timepiece is quietly striking, and the numerals and logo in white ceramic Globolight also shine (blue for the numerals, white for the logo), contributing to the impression of a discrete, functional tool watch.
‘We drew our inspiration for the Aera collection from classic tool watches that were designed to do one thing: measure time, and do it very well,’ says Minhas. And he explains how the starting point for the company aesthetic was an exploration of classic design objects – chairs, pens, cutlery and the like – where function was as important as form. ‘We looked at minimalist objects from the past that were designed around what they do,’ he explains. ‘These were simple, strong and honest, blending timeless design with rugged functionality. Just like those objects, Aera watches are original and designed to last.’
The M1 Blackbird is 39mm in diameter and water resistant to 100 metres. It comes with both a black Italian leather strap and grey Italian suede strap and features a quick-release mechanism enabling simple switching of these. Each watch arrives with its own handmade pouch in black pebble-grain Italian leather. £1,600; aera.co
