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View compareThe Story of DeRhenum
A Lifelong Obsession With Time
DeRhenum is the personal vision of Ruud van Rijn — watch collector, designer, and one of the world's most committed devotees of the jump hour complication. Over thirty years of collecting became a brand.
"Every watch I designed started with a watch I wished existed."
My name is Ruud van Rijn. I've been collecting mechanical watches for more than 25 years, and for just as long I've been captivated by one quiet, almost forgotten complication: the jump hour. A watch that doesn't sweep, doesn't tick in the usual sense — it jumps. One moment, then the next. Time revealed, not tracked.
DeRhenum is named after my family lineage — "van Rijn," the river. It's a name I carry with me, and a name I wanted to put on something worth keeping. After decades of studying vintage pieces, searching auctions across Europe, and asking myself what a modern jump hour should feel like on the wrist, I started building the answer.
Every DeRhenum watch is developed and assembled in the Netherlands, made in limited series, and shaped by a collector's standards rather than a committee's. This isn't fashion. It's horology, with a point of view.
Ruud van Rijn Founder & Designer, DeRhenum Watches
25+
Years Collecting
25
Pieces Per Edition
100%
Developed in the Netherlands
The jump hour is the most honest display of time there is. It doesn't decorate the moment. It simply gives it to you.
— Ruud van Rijn
Why Jump Hour
Long before DeRhenum existed, I was hunting down every jump hour reference I could find — vintage Cortebert, Chronographe Suisse, Audemars Piguet, IWC Pallweber, early Cartier experiments. Each one taught me something the next one couldn't.
What I couldn't find was a modern jump hour that respected the complication without turning it into a gimmick. So I designed one. Then another. Each is engineered around the movement, not the other way around — because in a jump hour, the movement is the face.
Built for Collectors, by a Collector
DeRhenum pieces are produced in small, numbered editions. The Bullhead Chronograph and the Space Jump Hour are each capped at 25 pieces. Every watch ships with a two-year warranty and worldwide FedEx delivery, inspected and finished by hand in our Netherlands atelier.
If you're new to jump hour watches, welcome. If you already know what you're looking at, you already know why you're here.
Disc Geometry
How an hour disc should rotate — weight, balance, the snap.
Aperture Framing
How a window should crop the hour. Honest, never decorative.
Case Architecture
Why a bullhead sits right on the wrist. Why crowns belong up top.
Minutes Matter
Why the minute deserves the same engineering as the jump itself.
A Three-Hundred-Year Story
The History of the Jump Hour
From a Roman cardinal's bedside in 1656 to the workshops of Geneva in 2025 — the quiet, almost forgotten complication that doesn't tick. It jumps. This is the lineage DeRhenum sits inside.
Most watches sweep. The jump hour waits. Then, at the top of the minute, an aperture in the dial reveals the next hour with a single mechanical snap. There is no smear of time, no continuous rotation — just a small, deliberate event, repeated twenty-four times a day.
For three centuries, watchmakers from Rome to Geneva to Friedberg have refined this idea. The names below built the ladder we still climb.
Three Centuries, Ten Moments
Scroll — the years rise and fall like a sun crossing the dial.
1656 — 1680
The Campani Brothers Light Up the Night
In Rome, Pietro, Matteo and Giuseppe Campani build the first “night clocks” for Pope Alexander VII — silent, oil-lamp-illuminated timepieces that show the hours through small apertures rather than on a dial. The very first digital display of time, combining wandering and jumping hours in a single mechanism.
Atelier
Pietro, Matteo & Giuseppe Campani
CIRCA 1700
Eckhart of Friedberg Shrinks It Down
A Bavarian master watchmaker named Eckhart, working in the small Bavarian town of Friedberg, builds what is widely considered the first true jump hour pocket watch. The hour disc snaps once per hour, the minute is read separately. The complication leaves the cabinet and enters the waistcoat.
Maker
Eckhart, Friedberg · Bavaria
1820 — 1840
The Paris Revival
A century later the idea is rediscovered in Paris. Breguet, Leroy and Lépine produce a small wave of jump hour pocket watches for a Napoleonic clientele that prizes mechanical novelty. The execution is finer, the apertures cleaner, the discs more precise.
Ateliers
Breguet · Lépine · LeRoy · Vacheron · Oudin
1883 — 1905
Pallweber Industrialises the Jumping Minute
Austrian watchmaker Josef Pallweber files the patent that changes everything: a digital display with three discs — hours, minutes, seconds — all jumping. IWC licenses it. Aeby & Landry, Cortebert and Girard-Perregaux follow. For two decades the jump hour is the most modern way to read time on the planet.
Houses
Pallweber · IWC · Kaiser · Aeby & Landry
1915
Dubois & Spori — Onto the Wrist
The First World War puts pocket watches in the trenches and proves the wristwatch isn't a fashion. Le Locle's Dubois & Spori produces the first true jump hour wristwatch — a small, brave object built at the moment the entire industry is being rewritten.
Atelier
Dubois & Spori · Le Locle
1928 — 1935
The Golden Age: Patek to the $9.99 Cylinder
The Art Deco years are the jump hour's commercial peak. Robert Cart in Le Noirmont supplies movements to half of Switzerland. Patek Philippe builds the most refined examples ever made — and at the other end of the market, American mail-order catalogues sell jump hour cylinder watches for $9.99. The complication is everywhere: in tuxedos and on tractors.
Houses
Robert Cart · Patek Philippe · the catalogues
1958 — 1964
Dial-O-Rama, Directime, and Mid-Century America
Post-war America rediscovers digital time. Benrus releases the Dial-O-Rama. Elgin and Hoga answer with the Directime. They are bold, slab-faced wristwatches that look like dashboard instruments — the jump hour styled for the Eisenhower era and the dawn of the jet age.
Houses
Benrus · Elgin · Hoga
1970 — 1975
The Fashion Wave — and the Quartz Cliff
Swiss, French and German makers flood the market with brightly-coloured fashion jump hours: cushion cases, smoked acrylic, mod typography. The party ends abruptly in 1975. Quartz arrives. The mechanical jump hour goes silent for two decades.
Houses
Catena · Lucerne · Sicura · the rest
1997 — PRESENT
Gérald Genta and the High-End Revival
Gérald Genta — the man who drew the Royal Oak and the Nautilus — brings the jump hour back, this time at the very top of horology. Vincent Calabrese follows. Then F.P. Journe with the Vagabondage. Urwerk with the satellite displays. Franck Muller, Audemars Piguet, MB&F, Patek Philippe. The jump hour becomes the connoisseur's complication.
Revival
Genta · Calabrese · F.P. Journe · Urwerk · MB&F
2025
DeRhenum — The Dutch Chapter
Three hundred and sixty-nine years after the Campani brothers, a small atelier in the Netherlands picks up the thread. Two pieces, each limited to 25: a Bullhead Chronograph with a jump hour aperture, and a Space Jump Hour built on a 34-jewel Sellita SW510M base. The complication that began in candlelight ends — for now — on the wrist.
Atelier
DeRhenum · The Netherlands
The DeRhenum Chapter
Three centuries of jump hour history. Two watches. Twenty-five of each.
Every choice in a DeRhenum — the aperture geometry, the disc weight, the snap of the jump — is a decision made by someone who has held a thousand of them. This is what we built.
PIECE N° 001 — 25 MADE
Space Jump Hour
Sellita SW510M, 34 jewels, a dial inspired by deep-space instrumentation. The minute disc orbits, the hour jumps. Three centuries of complication, pointed at the stars.
Explore the Space Jump Hour“The jump hour is the most honest display of time there is. It doesn't decorate the moment. It simply gives it to you.”
— Ruud van Rijn, Founder