Kevin Pedral, the mad designer of micro horology, is back with another collection called Rymd, three years in the making. And we like his work—the Maestro Royal Purple left us not wanting to look at guilloché dials from luxurious brands anymore, and the Triomphe Émeraude Vert took us on a trip we didn’t want to return from. Kevin is mad because his ideas are insane and the execution of his timepieces wild—he manages to combine shapes, textures, and colors like no other person can, all the while remaining within the sensical and wearable register of avant-garde horology a few rare brands know how to navigate. For there are many houses of watchmaking which make watches which we could generally describe as being “mad.” Such timepieces where the crystal is shaped like a space rocket, the case akin to an alien weapon, and time read by way of…I don’t know what the hell I’m looking at most of the time. But these watches wow and make us gasp for they are so unusual and strange but generally impossible to wear. 

I don’t understand why anyone would spend the equivalent of a brand new SUV on a mad watch which can only be worn at the Met Gala. It’s not so much about cost actually as much as it is about its de facto unnatural appearance and difficulty to be paired with any outfit for any normal occasion. Something that would look outstanding paired with Kanye West’ diamond mask but not with anything else and in no other circumstance. Moreover, it seems that there is a sort of misunderstanding regarding the meaning of avant-gardism in horological design. Many seem to believe that crafting an avant-garde watch has to mean breaking every single convention the industry put forth in the past two centuries whilst in reality it simply means thinking outside the box. Brewing new or experimental ideas, while remaining within some kind of timeless framework which permits to make unique watches which look like watches and not akin to insane fashion accessories (or statement pieces.) This is where the mad Kevin Pedral comes in. 

Note: the Rymd comes in four versions, two of which we’re studying today, and went live on Kickstarter with prices starting at 349€/$396 USD. 

Specifications 

The aforementioned and questionable Kanye West-style mad watches are always fascinating from mechanical and engineering standpoints—I’ll give them that. For instance, the movement’s architecture is re-imagined from the ground-up to place rotors where the dial normally is and the time-telling elements levitate on the side of the case akin to Las Vegas neon signs. It takes some ingenuity and balls to do these kind of things—I’ll give them that. But these price-on-demand timepieces are, generally speaking, either out of the financial reach of 99.99% of the human population, or visually bizarre, sometimes creepy, and at other moments provoking dizziness and the feeling that time doesn’t matter and shouldn’t be able to be read…on a watch. These watches exist, one might believe, just for the sake of creating exclusivity, to flex creative and engineering muscles, and to signal one doesn’t mingle with the little folks at watch fairs. So they are novel from mechanical standpoints—avant-garde even—but not to much from any other perspective.

This is where Kevin Pedral does come in. Him, and James Williams from Canuck Timepieces who co-designed the 4th Dimension in collaboration with AndoAndoAndo, and Fred Bekher from Horizon, and even Nicolas Ducoudert from BeauBleu, come up with new and experimental design ideas which are paired with all of the following three elements: (1) good and attainable specifications for daily use; (2) an appearance which is different and novel but not strange; (3) reasonable price tags sliding them at the reach of many, if not most, watch enthusiasts and collectors. Again, all of this explains what makes microbrands so darn interesting to me and to you: they can be innovative and find good manufacturing partners anywhere in the world to bring their singular vision for horology to life and at scale for the global enthusiast community. Which brings us at last to the Rymd, the Swedish word for “space,” a new collection in four variants two of which I have the pleasure of presenting you today: the burnt orange Solar and the true-GMT Meridian. 

The Rymd is housed in an elliptical (oval) tonneau case made of hardened 316L stainless steel (up to 800 Hv on Vicker’s Hardening Scale) measuring 38mm in “diameter,” 47.5mm lug-to-lug, 10.8mm thick, and accompanied by an integrated beads-of-rice bracelet starting at 22.5mm at the case and tapering down to 18mm at the clasp. The links are held together with split pins to keep them thin and light, and come together to a butterfly clasp equipped with a tool-less micro-adjustment mechanism*. By way of a screw-down sapphire case-back and 6.4mm screw-down crown, the Rymd boasts a cool 100 meters of water resistance which is plenty for most realistic adventures we might embark on. The Rymd’s everyday solidity is further made possible by a “squarcle” flat piece of sapphire crystal, a shape that sits between a square and circle, equipped with five layers of inner anti-reflective coating. In terms of movements, all versions but the Meridian are equipped with a Miyota 9039 (4Hz/42 hours of power reserve,) and the latter with a 9075 (4Hz/42Hrs.) 

*The prototypes I photographed did not have it but they will be in the production units. 

Before we get to the design of the Rymd—which we are all dying to do—I will first surf back to the first two paragraphs of this section in which I attempted to make some kind of point. The “mad” watches I mentioned multiple times, which I have no warm feelings for, are actually visually avant-garde in the sense that they look like nothing else we’ve seen before. They are indeed experimental however not new, but rather futuristic or abstract, not akin to Ferrari’s new electric car but rather something like a car that would levitate but have wheels on the roof, doors which open upside-down, and seats mounted on their vertical side. Which brings us back to the notion that these mad watches innovate for the sole purpose of innovating, and come across as concept watches and not avant-garde ones. Which is why, as I hope it makes sense, the Pedral Rymd should be seen as being avant-garde for it looks new and different but still functions like a traditional watch and can be used as such. Moreover, it’s actually built to be worn everyday. 

Design 

You will be the judge as to whether or not I made a point in the four preceding paragraphs. Anyhow. When we studied the Maestro and Triomphe a while back, we dwelled on these two models’ exceptional cases, which presented novel takes on classic genres of steel bodies which Kevin scratched to nothingness to redesign anew, so that they match the vision he had for the dial and how both would symbiotically work together. Kevin has done this work again with the Rymd for he designed what he describes as being an elliptical tonneau case which looks like this: from above it has the general appearance of a traditional tonneau body in the sense that it is oval and has meaty “lugs.” The elliptical part comes from the absence of visual barriers between what normally constitutes the lugs and mid-case, creating a continuous flow of metal being pushed outwards and down around curved lines east and west, north and south of it, towards the edges. A sense of movement highlighted by the sunburst-style brushing treatment of the case’s upper surfaces. 

You might remember by the way Isotope’s Flyway Off-White Air whose sapphire crystal has a hyperbolic paraboloid construction— flat east and west but curved north and south—which is what the case of the Rymd reminds me of a bit. (José Miranda is another mad designer!) Beyond that, the Rymd’s steel body further displays a beautiful curvature when looking at it from a side profile, perfectly espousing the shape of anybody’s wrist for great everyday comfort and a strong wrist presence. Since Kevin went as far as creating a new case shape, he thought might as well add subtle crown-guards east of it, making the grippy crown slightly recessed, and why not implement the squarcle sapphire crystal we met on the Triomphe, however made smaller and with a more dramatic appearance: the curvatures at the cardinal points are narrower making the curves which connects them angle at a sharper degree. Seeing this crystal inside this case creates a remarkable and intriguing play on shapes which shouldn’t work together (and probably never did before.)

Kevin is a master creator who knows how to endow the cases and dials of his watches with equal parts singularity and intrigue. Following the idea of the squarcle crystal, the dial is shaped the same, and the ensemble ties the bow on what is a remarkable release. The time-only versions of the Rymd, to which belongs the Solar, present finely sunburst dials complemented by perfectly tuned dégradé effects, where the darker areas welcome a fully graduated minute track and applied hour markers to make them legible. The markers are polished and shaped into rectangles complemented by inner-facing bevels, and are lumed-filled with BGW9. They are paired with polished, faceted, and lumed hour and minute hands whose tips are decorated with three holes arranged in a way that they remind me of Scream’s killer face mask. The Meridian, however, is a whole different affair: tapered, hollowed-out, and fully lumed hands, and a tiny GMT hand with a red lumed triangle, flying over a gold map of the world surrounded by a two-tone pearlescent GMT scale. 

Kevin is mad, as I told you. 

The Heart of the Matter

Squarcling back to the beginning of this review and the conversation we had about mad watches and all of the things they don’t do well, although they do a few things well like being ridiculous in how they look and how much they cost. As well as the proposed definition of avant-guardism in horological design and what sets apart the aforementioned mad watches from creations such as the Pedral Rymd Solar and Meridian. I know it’s all a matter of perspective and you might not agree with me on any of what I’ve said in this long, like super long review. But the gist of it is as follows: Kevin Pedral is a mad designer who has a particular talent for symbiotically combining original design and novel ideas with arguably solidly spec’ed out everyday timepieces made ultra affordable to the masses. This is again the stuff microbrands have been made off in the past decade or so and which I’m glad to see still exist. After having reviewed the Maestro, Triomphe, and now Rymd, I believe that Pedral is a rare bird in the narrow sub-genre of our niche world of horology: an avant-garde brand that makes sensical crazy watches we can afford and feel comfortable wearing on the daily. It’s wearable avant-gardism if you will. 

And that is cause for celebration, friends. 

Conclusion 

Now, the Pedral Rymd in all four versions— Solar in burnt orange, Midnight in blue, Verdant in petrol green, and the Meridian GMT—can be pre-ordered on Kickstarter now through July 16, 2026, for as low as 349€/$396 USD for the three-handers and 499€/$567 USD for the GMT for the first 48 hours of the campaign. After that, prices go up as they normally do and a few bonuses will be made available through certain stretch goals. For example a case scratch resistance upgraded to 1,200 Hv from 800 Hv. As final notes: the Rymd’s will only be available on Kickstarter, therefore Pedral will not sell it directly on its website once the campaign is over, and they are estimated to ship in February 2027. 

Thanks for reading.