Jisa Shaji
This is the first watch we’ve made with a religious subject on the dial. Our archive runs heavier on pop and graffiti, on bright color, on flagship characters from popular culture. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is something else entirely. Quieter. Older. Heavier.
The collaboration
The Ball Engineer M Ascension is our first official collaboration with Ball, and it took close to a year to get here. Ball is one of the quietest precision watchmakers in Switzerland. They take their time. So did we. The two of us moved through a long stretch of conversations and design rounds and approvals, and what came out the other side is one of the most considered pieces we’ve made.
The artwork
There are stretches in every life where it feels like everything has stopped. A deal falls apart, or a relationship breaks, or you spend years building something that collapses in a week. In that moment, it feels like the story is over.
It isn’t.
The lowest point isn’t where the story ends. It’s where it turns. What we do next is what defines us. Sitting in the pressure, in the loss, in the long stretch of uncertainty, and trusting that what waits on the other side is something we haven’t yet imagined.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus has been painted into Christian art for nearly four hundred years for that reason. It’s the same image every time. Christ shown calm and alive, his hand near his chest, his heart visible and wrapped in flames. The flames are not pain. They’re the symbol of love that doesn’t extinguish, the heart that, even at its lowest point, begins to give light back to the world. That’s the moment we wanted to render in miniature on a dial.
The figure sits in classical devotional posture against a black field. His halo radiates outward in golden rays. Around him, small specks of yellow paint scatter into the rest of the dial, like sparks moving back into a space that has begun to come alive again. The original Ball gas tubes glow through the indices, orange at twelve, green at every other hour. Soft by day, vivid at night.
Each dial is hand-painted by our in-house artists. It takes a few sittings, and no two come out the same.
The canvas
Ball builds for endurance. The Engineer M is a Swiss chronometer with COSC certification, 80 hours of power reserve, and a 904L stainless steel case. That’s the same material grade Rolex famously uses on their Oyster cases. It holds polish better, corrodes less, and quietly does its job under whatever you put on top of it.
There’s a small detail we love. The Engineer M’s gas tubes are self-powered. They don’t need light to charge. So the painting we put on top, the Sacred Heart that’s about light not depending on anything to be visible, sits over a piece of engineering that already does the same thing. There was no design brief that asked for this. It just lined up.
A watch is a quiet thing to wear. It sits on a wrist and counts time while you live your life. Most of what happens during a year on the wrist is invisible to anyone but the person wearing it. The Ball Engineer M Ascension is for that person. It’s for the journey itself, not the destination. The lessons that stay are the ones you collected along the way. Make it worth wearing.
Available now at iflwatches.com, priced at $3,490 USD. A limited-production release.
Technical Specifications
- Case: 40mm, 904L stainless steel
- Thickness: 12.5mm
- Lug-to-lug: 46.6mm
- Lug width: 20mm
- Crystal: Anti-reflective sapphire
- Caseback: Sapphire
- Water Resistance: 100m
- Caliber: Ball Manufacture RRM7309-C
- Movement: Automatic, COSC chronometer-certified
- Beat rate: 28,800 vph
- Power Reserve: 80 hours
- Jewels: 25
- Lume: 17 micro gas tubes (orange at 12, green at all other indices and hands)
- Bracelet: 904L stainless steel with folding buckle
- Wrist size: 11.5–18cm
