About 11i11 saat
11i11 saat is a Vienna-based wristwatch brand founded by Petar Kajevski, a Macedonian management and IT consultant and long-time Vienna resident.
Petar had only recently become a watch enthusiast when, in 2019, he got the idea for a design that plays with the graphical similarity between the Arabic number 11 and the Roman numeral II. Had it not been for the pandemic, the idea might have been executed just as a joke, with paper prints glued onto throwaway watches.
With all the stay-at-home time, however, the project’s ambitions escalated. Developed together with leading Macedonian designers – Apostol Tnokovski and the Koma Design Studio led by Nebojsha Gelevski – the design evolved to feature two first-ever uses of the watch crown: as part of an index (at 8 o’clock) and as an analog reminder (by turning the crown to different positions).
In the process, the original idea of playing with the 11 and II numerals – referencing the 5-to-2 or 10-past-2 time – evolved into showing 11 past 11, with an hour index for 11 o’clock and a minute index for 11 minutes.
The watch still has a Roman numeral for the 5 o’clock index. In the mechanical models, this index serves as a date window, showing the custom-designed date disk. The date-window arrangement makes a significant contribution to a minimalist look that is nevertheless rich in detail. Having a date window so close to the outer edge of the dial required the use of Sellita’s SW400-1, the only time-and-date mechanical movement with a large 31 mm diameter (compared to the standard 25.6 mm of movements such as the Sellita SW200 or the ETA 2824).
We used Cattin Watch from Switzerland as our watch producer. The decades-long experience of Guy Cattin and his team, together with that of their long-term Asian parts suppliers, resulted in watches of rock-solid quality.
The watches come with a large selection of straps from Hirsch in Austria and mesh bracelets from Staib in Germany – both leading producers in their fields. Among the strap options are leather straps in the Austrian red-white-red colors, custom-made for us by Hirsch.
