Circadian - The homage to history

The Circadian is probably one of the most personal watches I've made for Kaya Watch Co., although that wasn't necessarily how it started. I've always been drawn to vintage watches, particularly pieces from the 1950s and 60s, and I wanted to take some of the things I liked about those watches and bring them into something of my own.

The main two inspirations actually came from a watch that has been in my family for over 70 years. In September 2025, my great-grandmother passed away and I inherited my great-grandfather's watch, an Olma Automatic from the early 1950's. The other thing that inspired me was the speedometer of an old 1991 Kawasaki KH250 i had restored. Left for around a decade in an old wooden barn in the middle of nowhere, in the lake district, ive had it for around a year now. The speedometer numerical font and the aeroplane esc gauges i really liked. Those two inspirations kind of allowed me to merge them other into the watch dial to make something i thought looked great. (ill put an image of the bike and its speedometer below).

I'd seen the watch before, but having it in my hands and knowing that it had actually belonged to my great-grandfather made me appreciate it in a completely different way. It's a very simple watch compared with a lot of what you see today, but that's probably one of the reasons I like it so much. The case, the shape of the lugs, the numerals around the circumference of the dial all have a really nice simplicity to them. There's nothing particularly excessive about it. It just looks right.

The fact that it's still around and working after i gave the movement a service more than 70 years after it was made also makes it quite special to me.

Where the Inspiration Came From

When I started working on the Circadian, I found myself looking at that watch quite a lot and thinking about what I liked about it. I wasn't interested in copying it or making a modern version of the Olma. I wanted to understand what it was about the design that appealed to me and then use those ideas in my own way.

One of the things I kept coming back to was the simplicity of the dial. I've always liked watches that are easy to read but still have enough detail to make you want to look at them properly. With the Circadian, the outer minute track became an important part of the design. I liked the way older watches used their minute tracks to frame the dial, and I wanted to incorporate that into a more modern watch.

The applied markers add a bit of depth, while the minute track gives the dial a slightly more technical feel without making it look overly busy. I wanted the watch to have enough going on that you could appreciate the details, but not so much that everything was competing for your attention.

That balance was actually quite difficult to get right. When you're designing something yourself, it's very easy to keep adding things because you think each individual detail looks good. The problem is that when you put everything together, it can quickly become too much. I found myself taking things away just as often as I was adding them.

I wanted every part of the dial to have a reason for being there.

Taking Vintage Design and Making It My Own

I wanted the Circadian to have a vintage influence without looking like a vintage watch. I'm 24, and although I spend a lot of time looking at older watches for inspiration, I'm not trying to recreate the past.

There are certain things about vintage watch design that I think were done incredibly well, particularly the proportions, typography and simplicity. Those are things I wanted to take forward into my own designs, rather than simply copying an old watch and putting a different name on the dial.

At the same time, I wanted the watch to feel like a Kaya Watch Co. watch. That's probably one of the hardest parts of designing anything for the brand. There are thousands of watches you can take inspiration from, but eventually you have to stop looking at what everyone else is doing and decide what you actually want your own watch to be.

That's something I've tried to do with the Circadian. It has influences from the watches I love, but it isn't supposed to be a recreation of any one of them.

Why I Called It the Circadian

The name came from the circadian rhythm, the natural cycle that our bodies follow throughout the day and night. I liked the connection to time, but I also liked the fact that it wasn't simply a name describing a watch.

Time is something everyone experiences differently. Some days seem to go on forever, while other weeks disappear without you really noticing. Especially at my age, I feel like time goes quicker than you expect it to. You're always working towards the next thing and before you know it, another year has gone.

That's one of the things I enjoy about mechanical watches. They're constantly running in the background while everything else is happening around you. You put one on in the morning and it just keeps going while you get on with your day. There's something quite satisfying about that. The watch is always there, day or night, reliably on time and ready for action any time you are.

It felt like the right name for the watch.

Designing It as a Watchmaker

My experience working on watches has also had a big influence on how I design them. Before Kaya Watch Co. became what it is now, I spent a lot of time repairing and servicing watches, and that definitely changed the way I look at them.

When you're working on a watch, you start noticing things that you probably wouldn't notice just looking at one in a shop. You think about how something has been constructed, how the case sits on the wrist, how the dial works with the hands and markers, and whether something is actually practical rather than just looking good in a photograph.

That was something I kept in mind with the Circadian. I didn't just want it to look good as a design. I wanted it to work as a watch. I wanted it to be comfortable, legible and something I could genuinely wear every day.

Why I Don't Want to Chase Trends

One thing I've become quite certain about with Kaya Watch Co. is that I don't want to chase trends. There are obviously watches that become popular because they follow whatever is fashionable at the time, but that's not really what interests me.

I'd much rather make something that someone can look at in ten years and still think it looks good.

That's where the influence of the Olma came in again. It was made in 1952 and I still like the way it looks today. That's quite a good test for a design.

Obviously, I can't design a watch and guarantee that somebody will still love it in 70 years. But I can at least try to make the decisions based on things that I think are going to last rather than whatever happens to be popular right now.

The Most Personal Part

The thing I find quite special about the Circadian is that I now know exactly where some of the inspiration came from. It came from a watch that belonged to my great-grandfather.

I didn't plan that. When I started designing the Circadian, I wasn't sitting there thinking, I'm going to make a watch inspired by my great-grandfather. It just happened naturally.

I had the Olma in front of me, I liked certain things about it, and those things started influencing the way I was thinking about my own designs.

That's probably how most of my inspiration works. I'll see something I like, whether that's a watch, a car, a piece of furniture, architecture or even something completely unrelated to watches, and I'll start thinking about why I like it. Then I'll take bits of those ideas and see if I can make them work in my own way.

I think that's much more interesting than just trying to design something because you think people will like it.

What I Hope the Circadian Becomes

The thing I find most interesting now is that my great-grandfather's Olma has already had more than 70 years of history attached to it, whereas the Circadian is only just starting its own.

I don't know where the watches I've produced will end up or what they'll eventually mean to the people who buy them. Someone might wear one every day for years, someone might take it travelling, or it might eventually be passed down to somebody else.

That's ultimately what I'd like to achieve with Kaya Watch Co. I don't just want to make watches that look good when they're brand new. I'd like to make watches that people actually live with. Watches that get worn, pick up a few marks, go through different stages of someone's life and eventually become associated with memories of their own.

When I look at my great-grandfather's Olma, that's what I see. It's not just a 1952 watch. It's something that has been part of my family and has somehow made its way down to me. That gives it a value that has nothing to do with the price of the watch itself.

That's probably the biggest influence it has had on the Circadian. I want the watches I make to have the opportunity to become that kind of object for somebody else.

The Circadian started with a watch from 1952, but it's now its own watch with its own story to tell. Hopefully, over the next 10, 20, 30 or even 70 years, the people who wear them will give them the stories that they don't have yet.

And if one day one of those watches ends up being passed down to someone else, I'll consider that a pretty good indication that I got something right.