In a reimagination of Takashi Murakami’s iconic smiling flower artwork, Hublot has partnered with the Japanese artist to release 13 new NFTs and 13 unique watches. The collaboration marks the fourth joint artistic project between the two, and was announced at an exclusive event at Glass House on Feb. 2. 

If NFTs are right up your alley, the collaboration features unique NFTs, each inspired by Japanese video games and TV, as well as the 2021 collab between the watchmaker and the artist, the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami All Black. Each NFT is linked to an unique, limited edition Classic Fusion watch that will be on display at Watches & Wonders 2023 in Geneva. The time between the announcement of the project this month and the start of sales in early April allows for any interested buyer to collect one of the NFTs available on the decentralized NFT trading platform, OpenSea.

As for the timepieces themselves, Hublot and Murakami have elevated the idea of the watch as being a work of art, bridging the worlds of fine watchmaking with digital art. 

Hublot’s CEO Ricardo Guadalupe raved about the continued alliance between artist and watchmaker. “Our partnership with Takashi Murakami is allowing us to construct a history that interlinks all the works we have released with Takashi, both digital pieces and the watches themselves,” said Guadalupe. “Faithful to its history, Hublot is once again first, unique and different in how it rewards its collectors, providing them with privileged access to both ownership of and trade in unique artistic pieces.”

The 13th watch of the collection is the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Black Ceramic Rainbow, which reinterprets the artist’s iconic emblem: the smiling flower. Here, an exquisite gradient of rubies, sapphires, amethysts, tsavorites and topaz come together to form the 12 petals of the flower. In a display of ingenious engineering, Hublot developed a ball-bearing system which causes the petals to create a dizzying spectacle of color and shine, spinning on an axis with each movement. 

All but one of the watches will be available for purchase exclusively online at hublot.com, but here’s the catch. These watches can only be accessed by owners of at least one of the 234 NFTs issued last spring as part of the third Hublot-Murakami collaboration. Then, collectors will have one year to trade the 12 NFTs on OpenSea. In April 2024, only the collector that has managed to secure all 12 of new, unique NFTs will be eligible to purchase the star of the show: the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Black Ceramic Rainbow. Talk about exclusive. 

In the case that no single person has gathered all 12 NFTs, Hublot will auction off the watch in efforts to raise funds for charity.