It’s one of the most famous paintings of the 20th century: A desolate shoreline stretches out to a glassy, featureless sea, a strange malformed animal lies washed up on the sand, and in the foreground, a bare-limbed tree grows impossibly out of a solid wooden block. Of course, I’ve omitted the most memorable part: Nearly every major element is draped over with drooping, melted clocks and pocket watches. Salvador Dali’s seminal “The Persistence of Memory” has been one of the world’s most beloved and culturally relevant works of fine art since its creation in 1931, and just as the melting timepieces captured the attention of the general public, they’ve also inspired generations of watchmakers. Although many abstract, amorphous watch designs can reasonably be said to be at least tangentially inspired by Dali’s work (the auction-house darling Cartier Crash, for example), Exaequo wears its Dali inspiration more proudly than any other brand. Older watch enthusiasts may remember the Exaequo Softwatch of the ‘90s, which, in its later iterations, even carried a  Dali signature  (allegedly unlicensed) on the dial. For 2024, the Exaequo brand has returned, recreating the classic “melting” form for a new generation. The new Exaequo Melting Watch handsomely revives an offbeat ‘90s classic, while offering one of the most dramatic visual statements available anywhere at this price point.

As you might expect from such an amorphously shaped design, the wearing experience of the Exaequo Melting Watch is tricky to define. At 28mm wide (at maximum) by 47mm end-to-end (the case sides extend a fair bit beyond the fully hooded lugs), the Melting Watch’s gold PVD-coated stainless steel case carries a fair bit of wrist presence, with the closest analog probably being a long, narrow rectangular case — think Tank Cintrée, and you’ll be in the ballpark. That said, unlike the Cintrée, the Melting Watch sits tall and proud on the wrist, with a flat caseback that prevents the watch from wrapping around the wrist. This can lead to the case “floating” slightly on some wrists, but this should lessen as the strap breaks in. The asymmetrical, psychedelic form captures the “melted” theme well, with softly rounded polished surfaces throughout and a vastly wider 9 o’clock case side to visually offset the more dramatically stretched, drooping 3 o’clock side. The Melting Watch is not a particularly slim design either, and the height of the rounded, bulbous case sides further adds to the visual effect here. At 3 o’clock, the crown is more or less a formality – tucked deep into the most recessed concave bend in the case side, its smooth rounded surface can be tricky to grip without long fingernails. While some enthusiasts may balk at the Melting Watch’s box acrylic crystal, it’s difficult to imagine a sapphire or even mineral crystal in this shape that wouldn’t dramatically raise the watch’s price point. This is a far cry from simply producing a standard round crystal in a new size and would likely require special equipment to create in any material besides easily moldable acrylic. A flat, screw-fastened caseback completes the package here, standing partly responsible for the Melting Watch’s extremely un-sporty 30 meters of water resistance.

Exaequo continues the molten theme with the Melting Watch’s dial. Our review sample arrived with the traditional white dial option, complete with a simple matte-white surface and a raised outer hours track. Exaequo embraces the fanciful possibilities of this shape with the Melting Watch’s printed Roman numeral hour markers, which stretch and squash fantastically to fill the jellybean-like shape of the dial. Of course, this same shape also dictates the handset, which is, simply put, tiny. Exaequo fits the longest leaf-shaped minute hand that could realistically fit in this space, but a minute hand that grazes the outer track at 3 o’clock is miles away from any relevant markers at 6 o’clock. As one might imagine, the Melting Watch is not particularly legible for this reason, but practicality takes a back seat to visual drama in a design like this. However, Exaequo does complicate things further with the chemin-de-fer outer minutes track. Rather than the standard one line to represent each minute, Exaequo places lines on this scale at 30-second intervals. As a result, each hour numeral is separated by ten marks on the outer scale, which results in even more legibility issues than one might expect until the wearer visually adjusts to the unusual scale. Legibility challenges aside, it’s difficult to argue with the sheer amount of conversation-starting fun the Melting Watch’s dial brings to the table.

Inside the Exaequo Melting Watch beats the familiar Ronda 751 quartz movement. The 751 is one of Ronda’s more diminutive two-hand offerings, but it still offers solid performance including a seven-year battery power reserve and a decent accuracy of -10/+20 seconds a month. While it may not have the romantic prestige of a mechanical movement, the difficulty of finding a mechanical powerplant to fit this case at an acceptable price likely makes the prospect of a mechanical Melting Watch a non-starter.

Exaequo fits the Melting Watch with an alligator-pattern leather strap in warm mahogany brown. On paper, it’s a classical pairing to match the rest of the classical color palette, but Exaequo continues the melted theme here, too. The signed ardillon buckle is amorphously rounded, appearing to slowly drip away from the strap. The 6 o’clock side of the strap has its own elongated, asymmetrical “melted” tip, and while this is a playful idea in concept, in execution it leaves a distracting finger of a strap jutting past the second keeper on the wrist. This extra protrusion is bound to prove controversial among enthusiasts, but if the Melting Watch is judged as a pure statement piece (rather than a functional tool), it does add to the watch’s idiosyncratic overall character.

The image of Salvador Dali’s melting clocks and watches has been a cultural touchstone and a source of creative inspiration the world over for nearly a century, but despite the central horological theming, few watch brands have aimed to capture that same surrealist iconography. The new Exaequo Melting Watch revives one of the most beloved Dali-inspired designs of the last 30 years, with bold, dreamlike forms and an eye-catching execution that should garner a new generation of fans. The Exaequo Melting Watch is available now through the brand’s e-commerce platform. MSRP for this watch as tested stands at 550 CHF as of press time. For more information, please visit the brand’s website.