Peter Gunny didn’t set out to build a strapmaking business. He bought a Panerai, wanted a specific kind of distressed vintage leather he couldn’t find anywhere on the market, and made it himself out of necessity. That was 2007. One creation from the years that followed would turn that personal fix into something considerably stranger and more interesting than most straps ever get to be.
The Origin
Gunny bought his first Panerai, a 44mm Luminor, in 2007. He wanted a strap with the kind of aged, heavily worn character that period-correct vintage leather has, and found nothing on the market that matched what he had in his head. So he taught himself to make it. He’s described having an artistic streak going back to childhood, when he painted, and that instinct for texture and imperfection turned out to translate directly into leatherwork. His first strap, made for that same 44mm Luminor, launched what became Gunny Straps, based in Surabaya, Indonesia, by 2008.
The 74 Serie
The creation that made his reputation started with a photograph, not a customer order. Flipping through a Panerai catalogue, Gunny came across an image from the brand’s own museum: a vintage Radiomir reference 6152/1, fitted with an Angelus movement, wearing a light-brown aged strap with a simple mark handwritten on it, “74.” No official explanation accompanied the piece. The most persistent theory among Paneristi traces the number back to the Decima Flottiglia MAS, the Italian Navy’s wartime combat-diver unit, and suggests it identified a specific diver’s equipment during the covert underwater missions those frogmen carried out during the Second World War. Nobody has ever confirmed it. The mark itself, sitting behind glass in a collection Gunny couldn’t touch or acquire, is the only evidence that exists.
So he set out to recreate it instead. The result became the 74 Serie, and by his own account it was the first aftermarket version of that strap to exist anywhere. Every detail was studied and reproduced deliberately: the specific tone of the aged leather, the slightly uneven stitching of the original, and the handwritten “74” itself, which Gunny still draws by hand on every single strap, one at a time. No two examples come out identical, which is the point rather than a limitation.
The Reputation
Within the Paneristi community, the 74 Serie became the reference point other strapmakers’ attempts got measured against. A review from Panerai Central, a publication with a long track record covering the brand, put it directly:
“…only one has perfected it, and that is Gunny Straps.” Panerai Central, review of the Gunny Straps 74 Serie
That reputation held even as competitors tried their own versions. The specific combination Gunny built his process around, hand-aging, hand-stitching, and hand-marking, is straightforward to describe and considerably harder to execute consistently at the level collectors expect.
Deliberate Imperfection
What distinguishes Gunny’s approach isn’t just historical accuracy, it’s a philosophy about what a vintage strap should actually look like. The edges are left raw and unfinished, allowed to age naturally rather than sealed to look new for longer. The stitching is intentionally slightly off-alignment, matching the imperfect hand-stitching of a genuine period piece rather than the mechanical precision a factory strap would carry. Layering is built up unevenly, doubled at the tail, tripled near the buckle, mirroring how an actual worn strap would have reinforced itself at its weakest points over decades of use.
None of that reads as sloppiness. It reads as a maker who understood that a convincing vintage strap has to look like it survived something, not like it was manufactured to resemble survival.
From Personal Fix to Small Piece of History
There’s a specific kind of credibility that comes from starting as a collector solving your own problem rather than entering a market you’d identified as profitable. Gunny’s path ran that way from the beginning: a watch he’d just bought, a strap style he couldn’t find, and enough stubbornness and self-taught skill to make it happen himself. What he ended up building went further than solving his own itch. It gave collectors a version of an artefact the brand itself has never fully explained, one that previously existed in exactly one place, behind glass, unreachable.
The mystery of the original “74” mark has never been officially solved. Do you find the Decima MAS diver theory convincing, or is there a version of the story you’ve heard that points somewhere else?
Peter Gunny: Key Facts
| Brand | Gunny Straps |
| Based in | Surabaya, Indonesia |
| Started strapmaking | 2007, first strap completed for his own 44mm Luminor |
| Business founded | 2008 |
| Signature creation | The 74 Serie |
| Craft approach | Fully handmade: hand-aged leather, hand-stitching, hand-drawn “74” numeral on every piece |
