Ming and JN Shapiro's First Collaboration: The 37.06 Lightning
Guilloche'd by hand in L.A. and heat-colored by hand in Kuala Lumpur
The best collaboration watches often have a certain quality: a less-than-obvious melding of brand identities that results in something otherwise seemingly impossible. Ming and JN Shapiro have teamed up on a watch, and just the idea is exciting. It’d be hard to predict what such a combination would produce, but you probably wouldn’t have imagined something quite like the resulting 37.06 Lightning.
Cutting to the chase: the collaborative element here is primarily the dial, with the rest of the watch essentially fitting into the Ming 37-series family. It comes in the brand’s familiar 38mm case (10.9mm thick and 100m water resistant) with an exclusively customized hand-wound Sellita SW210.M1 inside and the hands and minimalist lume indices that largely characterize the Ming aesthetic. But that dial. It’s Grade 2 titanium engraved by the JN Shapiro team and heat-treated by Ming to produce the colorful effect.
Those familiar with the self-taught California-based independent watchmaker JN Shapiro know that one of his signatures is guilloche dials produced on traditional, hand-operated rose engine lathes. This is the first time for Shapiro to use the particular pattern that gives the watch its “Lightning” name. Each guilloche’d dial then goes to Kuala Lumpur where Ming is based to get its color — individually hand-executed by brand founder Ming Thein himself.
He’s a multitalented individual, if you weren’t already aware. Amusingly and suggestively, the brand’s press release annotates: “After a brief attempt to make heat treatment a team effort, it was determined that the rest of Team MING could not be left unsupervised with a butane torch.” You’re likely familiar with heat-blued hands, but that process can create a range of colors and that’s what you’re seeing in the 37.06 Lightning’s dial — rather than the result of any kind of coating.
This part’s kinda nuts: the brand says that two thirds of dials are rejected at the heat coloring stage. Imperfect timing can result in unideal colors, and “the guilloche process can expose variations in the titanium’s crystalline structure that compromise the final result,” the brand says. In other words, that’s two handmade JN Shapiro guilloche dials ending up unusable. They’ll only be able to produce around 10 watches per month.
The result, though, is pretty striking (so to speak — get it? Because “Lightning?”), and the exact coloring of each dial will be unique. Both Ming and JN Shapiro are known for extraordinary dials, and this brings them together in a cool way. But it’s also simply interesting in and of itself for collectors to have something from both brands together in a single product.
Another element that makes something like the Ming x JN Shapiro 37.06 Lightning notable are the brands’ positioning and statuses. Both are at that cusp, striking a balance between indy celebrity and just enough obscurity for a satisfyingly in-the-know appeal. While the brands’ respective aesthetics don’t make for an obvious match, their partnership isn’t totally unexpected: they’ve previously worked together on bracelets and cases, and co-founded the Alternative Horological Alliance along with indy brand Fleming. This, however, is the first co-branded watch from the pair.
The Lightning is beautiful and compelling for the above multiple reasons, but one can’t help but feel like this is a Ming watch with a JN Shapiro dial. Nothing wrong with that at all, but the collab element could have gone further and combined both brands’ DNA more equally to create something that neither could have made on its own and yet remain unmistakably tied to each brand. It’s more difficult, of course, but that’s what tends to characterize the truly groundbreaking and memorable collabs that we love. What would such a Ming x JN Shapiro watch look like? Perhaps a minimalist and design-forward JN Shapiro or a comparatively classical Ming? Who knows. But it sounds exciting.
The Ming x JN Shapiro 37.06 Lightning will be available from Ming online and at its physical retail locations for a price of 6,250 CHF. It's not limited in number but, as mentioned above, by production capacity.
Learn more on Ming’s website here.
