The Hour Glass, retailers of the world's most exclusive luxury watches, has announced the formation of The Hour Glass Foundation of Contemporary Horological Art (FOCHA). Fulfilling The Hour Glass's mission to champion the mechanical watch as the primary symbol for high-end luxury self-expression in contemporary culture, Singapore-based FOCHA has been established – for 2 million Swiss Francs – to pay tribute to all forms of technological development and innovation in the world of high-end watches over the past 35 years, the span of the movement's contemporary renaissance.
In conjunction with this, The Hour Glass has also planned a museum – dubbed MOCHA – to go with it. They have big plans for it – including making it as important a symbolic institution as the Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, or the Guggenheim. Planned activites at the MOCHA could include watchmaking courses, lectures by world-renowned industry specialists, as well as joint exhibitions with other museums and even the watch manufacturers themselves. A mobile institution for now, MOCHA plans to find a permanent home roughly by 2009.
