Hearts and Craft
To master a rarefied artistic craft requires passion, patience and a dexterous hand. But, the real skill lies in moving forward and innovating on these age-old techniques. Karishma Tulsidas discovers noteworthy metiers d’art adorning watch dials
he very notion of mechanical watchmaking stems from a noble dictum: to perpetuate the traditions that have served to ensure punctuality for the longest time. Sure, hand-regulated watches are an anachronism in this age of atomic clocks, but keeping the craft alive is virtuous and challenging at the same time. It is no surprise that it is in this industry that reveres age-old craftsmanship that the dying metiers d’art have found a new lease of life—these are esoteric crafts that had floundered in the 20th century as machines and lasers took over painstaking handcraftsmanship. Franck Touzeau, the international watch marketing and creation director for Piaget, emphasises, “A true luxury brand has to keep in mind that we need to continue to capitalise on the best know-how. In the beginning of the 20th century until the 1950s, Switzerland lost a lot of enamellers. At the beginning of the 1990s, there were only 100 enamellers in Switzerland, compared to the 60,000 at the beginning of the 19th century.” Over the years we’ve been reacquainted with a litany of techniques that include engraving, enamelling (in its various forms), embroidery, and more. Staying true to their evolving nature, horologists have pushed the envelopes of creativity to further elevate these techniques. At Cartier, where the brand recently set up its own metiers d’art workshop in La Chaux-de-fonds housing 28 craftsmen specialising in all manners of metiers d’art, the possibilities are endless. We’ve seen dials decorated with micromosaic tiles, pieces of wood, petals and, last year, golden granules meticulously soldered together to form the head of a panther. This year, the French maison appropriates this same age-old technique of granulation, and utilises enamel beads to create, you guessed it, another panther head. Now take a minute and let this sink in: enamel beads. The process of creating a 2D enamelled dial is already very complex, as the process of painting with vitreous enamel and firing needs to be done repeatedly to achieve the right hue. Now imagine doing the same process to beads of enamel: once they’ve been made to size, they have to be laid out in accordance to the blueprint and fired over and over again to set the colour and fuse the beads together but not completely melt them. Is it any wonder that it takes the craftsman one month to complete a single dial?