Shinola has made a habit of weaving intricate stories into the foundations behind its newest watches. The stories themselves are quite interesting, recalling obscure moments in American history, with the brand then matching the aesthetic details of the newest watches to refelct them. The new Bronze Monster Automatic Timepiece is no exception, being released today alongside a tale from the Prohibition era. The new Monster watches features a bronze case and dark colorways, elements cited by Shinola as inspired by Prohibition times and by the stealth of the rum-runners on the Michigan-Ontario waterway that thrived in those times.

In the 1920s, during Prohibition, Detroit was a hub of international liquor smuggling, with an intricate network of rum-runners crossing the Great Lakes from Canada to deliver the in-demand goods. Under the cover of night, often in the freezing cold, and in the grittiest environments, ?the art of the smuggle? was carried out as fishermen and pleasure boaters steadily adapted to the lucrative underground industry. By 1929, it was estimated that Detroit was supplying three quarters of the county?s illegal alcohol, and in 1933, with the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment repealing prohibition, Michigan was the first to ratify it. The new model works to channel this history, described by the Detroit-based brand in the same descriptive language as the rum-runners it channels: dark, hardy, and filled with a spirit of grit.
The watch itself uses the sam...