This is the new Aether + Bamford D-300, it was released earlier this month, just 50 will be made, and each is made in Switzerland with a Swiss-made automatic mechanical movement.
The D-300 has a black ceramic case around a titanium core that carries the movement, it has a 120 click ceramic bezel, an anti-reflective sapphire crystal, and it’s water-resistant to 300 meters or 1,000 ft/30 ATM.
This is the new Aether + Bamford D-300, it was released earlier this month, just 50 will be made, and each is made in Switzerland with a Swiss-made automatic mechanical movement.
History Speedrun: Bamford
George Bamford started the Bamford Watch Department in London in 2003. It all came about because he had been at a dinner party and he noticed that half the guests were wearing the same Rolex Daytona model he’d been given for his 18th birthday. I should probably note that George is the son of JCB chairman Lord Bamford, which goes a long way to explaining that 18th birthday gift.
As a result of that dinner party, he asked JCB’s technical research department how to change the color of the Daytona’s steel, and the answer was a diamond-like carbon coating, an industrial finish that turned the watch pitch black. He came back from a holiday in the south of France with 25 orders from friends and acquaintances who wanted their own custom Daytonas.
For years the business customized Rolex, Audemars Piguet, and Patek Philippe watches without the makers’ approval, he became an outlaw of sorts in the high-end watch world, and Rolex went so far as to refuse to service anything Bamford had altered.
That outlaw status changed in 2017, when LVMH’s watch chief Jean-Claude Biver made Bamford the official customizer for Bulgari, Zenith, and TAG Heuer. Under the new contract, Bamford stopped modifying any brand it had no agreement with, Rolex included.
Bamford’s own watches, sold under the Bamford London name, debuted in 2017 with the Mayfair. It was a quartz watch first made as a loaner for customers whose watches were in for service. It proved to be hugely popular, and it’s clear the demand for Bamford-branded watches was there so the mechanical Bamford GMT followed in November of the next year. The ceramic Bamford D-300, the company’s first dive watch, arrived landed on store shelves in 2025.
The D-300 is Aether’s second watch with Bamford London, it’s a 50-piece limited edition version of the ceramic diver Bamford introduced as its first dedicated dive watch in early-2025. The case is black ceramic around a titanium core that holds the movement.
History Speedrun: Aether
Palmer West and Jonah Smith launched Aether in Los Angeles in early-2009, both were film producers whose credits included Requiem for a Dream and A Scanner Darkly. They started the brand because they couldn’t find the kind of technical outerwear that actually held up in bad weather and still looked right in a city.
Before opening a fixed shop, Aether sold their goods out of the AETHERstream, a 34-foot Airstream rebuilt as a mobile store with French industrial designer Thierry Gaugain, who’d spent more than 15 years working with Philippe Starck. Gaugain also worked with architecture firm Envelope A+D on the company’s first standalone store, AETHERsf, which opened in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley in 2013.
It was built from three stacked 40-foot shipping containers, the second staggered outward to form a glass-enclosed cantilevered lounge, and a dry-cleaner-style conveyor carried stock between the floors.
Aether now has stores in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Aspen, and Park City. Its range has grown from outerwear into snow, motorcycle and everyday clothing, footwear, and accessories. Its first watch was a GMT made with Bamford in 2023. The Aether + Bamford D-300 diver followed in October of 2026.
The Aether + Bamford D-300
The D-300 is Aether’s second watch with Bamford London, it’s a 50-piece limited edition version of the ceramic diver Bamford introduced as its first dedicated dive watch in early-2025. The case is black ceramic around a titanium core that holds the movement, it measures 42mm across, 13mm thick and 45.5mm lug to lug, and its shape comes from Bamford’s cushion-cased GMT.
The bezel is a single piece of ceramic with 120 clicks, the screw-down crown and caseback are titanium, the crown sits inside a ceramic guard, and the sapphire crystal carries three anti-reflective layers on its underside. Water resistance is 300 meters which works out to approximately 1,000 ft or 30 ATM.
Almost every surface of the watch is sandblasted matte, only the bezel’s outer rim is polished. The D-300 is powered by either an ETA 2824-2 or a Sellita SW200-1 Swiss-made automatic mechanical movement, Bamford uses both to keep supply steady. The movements are remarkably similar, both being Swiss automatics beating at 4 Hz, the ETA has 25 jewels and the Sellita has 26, and they have ~38 hours of power reserve.
The bezel is a single piece of ceramic with 120 clicks, the screw-down crown and caseback are titanium, the crown sits inside a ceramic guard, and the sapphire crystal carries three anti-reflective layers on its underside.
Aether designed the dial in-house, it drops the standard model’s crosshairs, has no date display, uses gray markers and hands, and puts Aether’s Summit Blue on the five-minute markers, seconds-hand tip and bezel triangle – all of the lume glows blue in the dark.
Each watch is numbered on the case back and ships with rubber and nylon straps in a floating, crushproof case. If you’d like to read more or order your own you can visit the listing on Aether here.
Images courtesy of Aether
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
