This watch is made of coffee and that’s not the interesting part

James Thompson doesn’t work with materials. He messes with them. Car paint, aluminium foam, glow-in-the-dark resin, coffee grounds… in his hands, the building blocks of a watch become something more like subversive art. Known across the industry as Black Badger, James rose to cult status through collaborations with MB&F, De Bethune, and Sarpaneva before joining Danish brand Arcanaut in 2020 as co-owner and Chief of Materials Development. It was a match made not in Switzerland, but somewhere weirder, wilder, and far more fun.

Arcanaut is what happens when a group of design misfits decides to make watches for people who are tired of what watches have become. Based in Scandinavia but free of Nordic clichés, Arcanaut blends engineering precision with irreverent joy. And at the center of it all is James, turning absurd ideas into serious objects with emotional weight.

His latest creation? A mechanical watch with a dial made from ground coffee beans. But to reduce the D’Arc Roast to a novelty is to miss the point. Like everything James touches, it’s a challenge wrapped in charm. Equal parts tactile, philosophical, and hilariously on-brand. In this unfiltered conversation, James opens up about materials, mischief, and why he has no interest in being taken seriously.

You’ve called yourself a “materials guy,” but the materials you use – Fordite, coffee, aluminium foam – aren’t just rare. They’re emotional, cultural, almost confrontational. What kind of reaction are you trying to provoke when someone sees a dial made from something they’ve never seen on a watch before?

That’s something that really tracks across all of my work, this attention to the emotive qualities of materials. It goes beyond storytelling, as to be honest, is so overdone a lot of the time that it really becomes a bit of an eye-roller. If the material has this near-religious pedigree, then chopping it up and putting my logo on it really isn’t making it any more interesting. It’s just about me wanting to be connected to something else. I mean if I had something like say one of Ayrton Senna’s helmets, and I decided to chop it up and make bottle openers out of it… yeah I’d be burning in hell forever. So it needs to be something with attention and restraint.

The material obviously has to contribute something to the project, but it also needs to say something that we feel, as a brand, is worth saying. Yes, titanium is cool, and titanium from the SR-71 Blackbird is even cooler… but is it on-brand? Does it elevate the project beyond the cool pictures we can add to the press release? In my experience, this so-called “secondary level of appeal” is a very effective tool if handled properly.

I think the Fordite material is a prime example of that… people see the multicolored dial on a Fordite Arcanaut watch and get excited about the bright swirling colors. That’s enough for them, it’s a visually pleasing piece. When they then ask “How the heck did you paint all those tiny stripes and swirls like that??” and I tell them that’s the natural formations of car paint forming on the walls and work surfaces of industrial car factory paint bays… their jaw drops and they instantly are interested.

I use something called the Eyebrow Index when showing our pieces. When you show a watch to someone if their eyebrows go up, they are impressed. Gold and diamonds and tourbillons impress people. If their eyebrows go down, they are interested. They are trying to understand, trying to figure out what this unexpected aspect is. If given a chance to decide, I will always choose to interest people rather than just impress.

Most definitely we are having a bit of fun with Arcanaut. I think that shows in the pieces, and we are really striving to keep it that way. It’s so easy to drift across the line and get into the realm of being pretentious or silly. So there needs to be a lot restraint, which isn’t what you expect to hear from a brand that makes watches out of powdered Blue Mussel shells or coffee.

One of my great pleasures with all of this is to be showing someone an Arcanaut at a show or event and that person just pops off their Rolex or Breitling and gets excited about trying on something that uses these interesting and emotionally connective materials. Watch the eyebrows eh!

Your early collaborations – MB&F, Sarpaneva, De Bethune – were with brands that have their own strong identities. Were you ever afraid your fingerprints would be lost? Or did you enjoy hijacking the DNA of someone else’s brand?

In my earlier days in the watch industry this was something I leaned quite heavily into. As a Canadian I think there is a bit of ingrained over-humbleness a lot of the time, and I really enjoyed the fact that this kid from the Canadian suburbs was sitting across a desk from some of the most important and influencial people in the watch industry. I absolutely, unabashedly, loved that I got to associate myself with these amazing people. I’m a bit embarrassed to say that was really the biggest attraction of the project for me. Max Büsser of MB&F watches quite literally had to chase me down to pay me my end of our project! Hey I had an MB&F with my Black Badger logo on it! Who needs money, right?

But what I mean is that I enjoyed being a guest-star so much that I wrapped that around myself like a big comfy blanket. It was perhaps a bit creatively lazy, for me to think “Well, De Bethune is a spectacular brand, so whatever we do will be amazing”… it’s a bit like having a small startup company in your garage, but its your parent’s garage. In their $10,000,000 house. I do think you need to feel the ice cracking under your feet a bit, keeps you aware of the gravity of your decisions, not just passing fancy.

Some brands have been better at that “loaning of DNA” than others, and it does show in the final pieces. MB&F and Sarpaneva were spectacularly generous in that regard. Other Swiss brands have had such a encumbering weight of their own egos and self-guilded history that even though my logo may be on the piece, I look at it and dont recognize a single calorie of my design input they have kept. It’s really depressing and quite dishonest I think also.

You joined Arcanaut as a co-owner in 2020. When you became part of the brand’s foundation, did you feel a new responsibility to limit the weirdness or was it license to push it even further?

Ha ha ha, when Anders Brandt came to see me in Göteborg and forwarded the idea of me joining Arcanaut as a co-owner, it was a real revelation. I wasn’t the guest-star anymore. I had a home, and I was part of the DNA of the brand now. It was quite a new feeling for me. In fact, Anders still gives me a hard time because I keep referring to Arcanaut as “yours” and not “ours”.

I had helped Arcanaut with their ARC I release around 2019, I designed the lume elements and was very pleased with the result and the brand as a whole. Shortly thereafter when it came time to start working on the ARC II piece, we agreed that having every project be a “special collaboration” didnt make much sense. So I came onboard and have been ruling with an iron first ever since!!! Ha ha but really it’s a much different vibe when its your own brand, you can be more subtle and delicate with the parts of yourself you impart on things, it doesnt have to be all these dramatic press release highlights.

I mean we are bound by absolutely nothing. We aren’t Swiss and we arent sorry. The Nordics are absolute innovation hotbeds for everything from architecture to cuisine movements, so why should a Scandinavian watch brand be any different at all. Not having the burden of hundreds of years of Swissness to carry around all day is amazingly liberating. I mean I’m a Canadian living in Sweden, Anders is Danish, and Rob (brand development manager and the Third Amigo) is Irish but lives in Germany. It gives a depth of perspective that you just won’t get from 3 dudes from Geneva.

Swiss watchmaking canonizes rules. Arcanaut reads like graffiti on the cathedral walls. Are you designing for collectors. Or are you designing in opposition to them?

You know what? That really is a fantastic way of putting it. Graffiti on the cathedral walls… To us, Arcanaut has an obligation to do our best to STAY irreverant and to keep challenging the stagnation of things. Honestly, if you ever see us doing something mundane and everday, it’s a clear sign that our alien overlords have struck and we have replaced with replicants… stay vigilant, people of Earth!

We really figured out very early on that the “established brands” are actually a little jealous of the way we get to do things. The ability to brainstorm over a few beers and then be sketching ideas on the train home, its so fast and natural. No mid-level marketing committee to discuss ad nauseum every detail. We run the creative side of Arcanaut like a jazz bar, baby! We are bouncing ideas, stepping on each others toes, invading each others personal space. We are literally cross-pollinating the creative process, and that mutant offspring is something that a Swiss marketing think tank would never have come up with and the liberating power of that is that we are bound by nothing.

It’s something that we find really resonates with our collectors community. It feels more like we started a garage band a few years ago and now our loyal fans are showing up to bigger and bigger gigs, reminding us of where we came from, for sure, but also inspiring and encouraging us. Whether it’s Christoffer who sends me a message on my kids birthday, or Thomas who goes out of his way to take the most amazing photographs of his Arcanauts, this community reinforces that not only what we are doing is working, but perhaps more importantly, the way we are doing it.

Arcanaut doesn’t sell watches. It sells subversion. Under the guise of Scandinavian minimalism. What’s the most rebellious design decision you’ve made that nobody noticed… but should have?

Ha ha, I ran this particular question past Anders (founder and co owner of Arcanaut) and his instant response was “Wow, are we minimalistic?”

Scandinavian Minimalism is something that the world recognizes, but is something that most Scandinavians are tired as hell of. It’s like telling a French chef he’s not being French enough. But if people EXPECT a watch brand based in Copenhagen to be all minimalistic and cold, imagine their faces when we drop something like the Bonehead on them!!

But really, when Anders and I talked about this question, he said it was the behind the scenes, unseen solutions that he was really most proud of. Things like the insane MacGyver solutions we needed to facilitate making watch dials out of 40 year old lumps of industrial car paint, the endless hours sanding Blue Mussel shells for pigment. The fact that our cases are milled by a Danish company that does micro engineering for the hearing aid industry… these are all aspects of our way of working that we most proudly call Arcanauty!

You once said, “Sometimes things blow up.” When was the last time a project imploded on you. Not technically, but conceptually? And what did it teach you about your own instincts?

Well there’s been a few that really crashed on takeoff. I had two watch projects with London-based brands that, in an instance of perfect timing, released exactly when London was going into Covid-lockdown. Suddenly grocery shelves were empty, people were terrified, and I’m trying to sell them a $20,000 watch.

The concept can blow up, but also sometimes things can literally blow up. I’ve had my lathe burst into spinning hellfire flames while milling Zirconium. I had an espresso grinder fly apart at nose-distance on me… ok I was stuffing gravel into it at the time. That’s what the boys pay me the big bucks for, ha ha. But really that Mythbusters-style “Failure is always an option” is so far outside of the norm in our industry that it’s one of our most powerful creative tools.

But as far as instincts go, one that took me rather a long time to come to terms with is the “know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em”. I can tend to be so enamored with my own processes and the idea i see in my head that I can drive the other guys absolutely up the wall. Production schedules, release dates, etc, these have no seat at my table unfortunately. I end up having to buy the beers a lot.

Everyone loves to call your work playful. I think the playfulness is a disguise for deeper critique. Am I overthinking it? What are you really trying to say through absurdity, glow-in-the-dark cartoons, or making a watch out of a cup of coffee?

No I think you are really on the button with this here. We can’t directly compete with Rolex or Chopard…so why the hell would we? There’s such a satifying feeling of handing an Arcanaut with a coffee dial to some Geneva exec in a $20,000 suit, and having them say “good lord I wish we got to do stuff like this. How fun!”

I am a firm believer that these little objects we allow into our lives can entertain us also. And there’s nothing to apologize about there. Hi, my name is James, and I hope this watch makes you smile a little bit.

I mean on one hand, yes it’s definitely a bit of thumbing your nose at the guilded titans. But honestly it’s a rather satisfying round of design masturbation. When I met up with Anders and Rob in Stockholm at a fancy retailers event, I invited them into the mens room with me and asked them to promptly lock the door and turn off the lights… I produced the prototype Bonehead dial from my pocket, and the tiny bathroom exploded in blue light. The reaction of my two friends was honestly more satisfying than any other part of the project. And of course the muffled laughter through the bathroom door about what was going on it there. So yes, a Geneva office on the Rue-de-Rhône would be great, but a dark bathroom is much more on-brand for us! Ha ha!

When you were developing the coffee composite for the D’Arc Roast, did it ever feel like you were walking a tightrope between beauty and parody? Where is the line?

Oh no there was no tightrope at all, ha ha! I told my dad about the coffee watch project and I think his response was along the lines of “hmm thats what a masters degree gets you in Sweden eh?”

It was a real satisfaction when we actually got it to work though!! To go from a funny ironic idea, to actually handing over an early prototype edition to a collector in the royal family of Dubai was VERY satisfying. If we were honestly worried about people rolling their eyes and calling us idiots, we’d never get out of bed in the morning!

But this was really a legit development project. We linked up with Cafe Da Matteo here in Göteborg, Sweden. Da Matteo has been previously named one of the top 5 coffee houses in the world and just recently won a big European industry competition. We partnered up with founder Chris Landström, and examined every possible detail of the coffee itself. Bean variety, roast, grind, everything was experimented with and examined to give what we found to be the ideal result.

We found that the watch was attractive enough on its own merit that the fact that the dial was made from coffee was actually more of a secondary level of appeal. This gave the wearer the choice of then telling the story of what its made from, if they wanted. Like a hidden secret, or some kind of password protected speakeasy. If we were too on-the-nose about it, it would have been too much of a cartoonish prop. Too easy to get. This way it is a bit of a dialogue. Kind of what we call “stealth wealth”, bling that isnt too in your face. Like diamonds on the inside of a ring, ha ha.

The D’Arc Roast doesn’t wink. It holds eye contact. It’s sincere. It’s cozy. It’s serious. But it’s also… made of coffee. What emotion were you chasing in that contradiction?

I really think it comes from a place of us being unapologetically playful. I mean Anders and Rob and I rocked up to Dubai Watch Week in the loudest Hawaiian shirts ever made. Because, why not? This outsider attitude isn’t just a marketing angle. It’s not about just being disruptive, it’s about going out of our way to STAY as outsiders. We’d sell way more watches if we just sold out and went middle of the road, believe me. I mean this feeds my family, and it’s in my best interest to sell as many watches as possible. But there’s something more to it than that. And that, whatever that is, is something we are very proud of together.

Most watch brands ask: “How can we be taken seriously?” Arcanaut seems to ask: “Why should we care?” As the industry starts to take you seriously anyway, do you worry about losing the mischief?

If we were worried about being taken seriously, we all would have gone out of a window by now. It’s a bit like being a comedy troupe, I think. All the serious work that goes on behind the scenes, that ALLOWS us to be goofy and charming and ‘fly by the seat of our pants’ is literally 5x the work of just making a nice sensible steel watch. It’s sincerely a hell of our own creation, because now we are expected to have these little hidden winks and easter eggs in our designs.

Our community expects more of us. They want us to stay pirates. And we sure as hell aren’t going to let them down.

What makes James Thompson such a rare and vital voice in modern watchmaking isn’t just his choice of materials. It’s his total refusal to play by the rules those materials are expected to follow. He doesn’t just disrupt tradition; he mocks it, toasts it, and rebuilds it with a grin.

And yet, beneath the mischief is a quiet rigor. A coffee dial might make you smile, but it also asks you to think: Why can’t watches feel like this? Why not warmth instead of cold precision? Why not joy instead of intimidation?

Arcanaut isn’t a rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s proof that sincerity and playfulness aren’t opposites. They’re fuel. And as long as James and his crew are designing from the bathroom with the lights off, we can all rest easy: the pirates are still at the helm.

The Arc II – D’Arc Roast is available now. For more watch-related content, check out Selfish Pursuit.