The EB history of the Heritage Diver
The Bloxworth Heritage Diver: From Lockdown to Obsidian
Some watches start with a gap in a collection. Others begin with a sketch, an old reference watch or an idea that refuses to go away.
The Bloxworth Heritage Diver came from a little bit of all of those things, helped along by something none of us expected: time.
PART 1
The story starts in 2020.
When the first lockdown moved us away from EBHQ, our usual pace of life suddenly changed. It gave us an unusually generous amount of time to think, sketch, revisit ideas and, inevitably, obsess over details.
What would an Elliot Brown dive watch look like if it took its cues from the great sports and dive watches of the 1950s and 60s?
The idea was simple. Take the character of our existing Bloxworth Chronograph and create a classic three-hand diver. A little smaller. A little more colourful. But engineered very much as an EB.
We started with the case, bringing it down from 44mm to 40mm, with deeper undercuts and polished chamfers to reduce its visual volume and help it wear smaller still. Then came the shallow box crystal, bringing plenty of vintage character. A slim, coin-edge bezel offered plenty of grip without unnecessary bulk, while a ceramic insert delivered the precision and durability we wanted from a modern dive watch. The two-layer sandwich dial was combined with a bespoke basket-weave texture, creating a detail that was subtle from a distance but came alive up close.
And then there was the strap.
The Heritage Diver prompted us to design our own take on the classic tropic dive strap, right down to the breather holes, cutting guides and twisted rope texture on its underside, inspired by the ropes and lines surrounding us every day at our working boatyard home in Poole.
By the time the first collection arrived, it felt reassuringly familiar and completely new at the same time.
THEN WE TURNED UP THE COLOUR
A few years later, we went back to the Heritage Diver. Not because the original needed fixing, but because it had given us somewhere interesting to go next.
The result was the Bloxworth Heritage Diver Chromatic Collection.
This time we pushed the colour, texture and detailing much further. Bright Orange, Harbour Blue and Meadow Yellow, Drunk Tank Pink with soft grey, Navy and Pale Sky Blue all found their way into a collection that didn't take itself too seriously.
There were changes beyond colour too.
The original hands made way for a finer vintage diver design, raised through the centre with a chine line to catch the light and filled with Super-LumiNova. Wave-textured dials gained applied indexes, bezel markings were tailored to individual colourways and the original deployant buckle was refined into a slimmer, lower-profile double deployant clasp.
The Heritage Diver had grown up a little, without losing the personality that made the original work.
FROM CHROMATIC TO OBSIDIAN
So naturally, after making one of our most colourful collections, we went in completely the opposite direction. Cue the Bloxworth Heritage Diver Obsidian - where the Chromatic Collection celebrated colour, Obsidian strips it right back.
Black ceramic and steel. A textured black rubber strap. A design reduced to the essentials and inspired by the glossy, functional dive watches of the 50s'. Obsidian brings the Heritage Diver story full circle.
What began during lockdown, to slow down and explore the classic dive watch, has evolved through colour, texture and increasingly refined detailing, before arriving at perhaps its purest expression yet.
