This Wildly Extravagant Shell-Shaped Speaker Salutes Bowers & Wilkins’ 30th Anniversary

The $100,000 (!) Nautilus speaker set is a throwback to a classic Bowers & Wilkins design.

Sometimes, the most logical way to update a classic is to look back toward, well, the classics themselves. High-end home audio is a category seldom at rest, and the best luxury audio experiences are often tough to top, so Bowers & Wilkins nodded to its own archive with a special-edition speaker that calls back to the early ’90s (1993, to be exact).

The Nautilus 30th Anniversary Speaker is distinctive in both form and function, a high bar to clear considering what Bowers & Wilkins consistently dreams up in the present day.

The new launch comes in a limited-edition Abalone Pearl that fittingly looks like a mollusk shell washed up on a sandy beach, all in a nod to the milestone.

Of course, the iconic speaker comes in a full run of classic colors (Black, Silver and Midnight Blue chief among them), and more vibrant custom options are also available.

Bowers & Wilkins notes that the Nautilus was a bold move at the time, with an “instantly recognizable form” that’s notably “defined by the science of sound.”

The legendary audio company also sagely notes that “Nautilus is the pursuit of an ideal speaker and the approach and the methodology to get there,” all thanks to the tireless work of founder John Bowers.

The famed speakers are handmade in Worthing, England, and such precision and attention to detail leads to both high demand and a wait list of two years to secure a new set.

There’s also an intricate sanding and polishing process that follows building the speaker enclosure itself, and the result is a crystal-clear listening experience (likely an understatement).

Going out beyond the typical “curve” of the home audio experience comes with a requisite price tag of $100,000 for a pair of speakers, but if 30 years of audio craftsmanship is anything to go off, it’s an investment sure to pay off.