Czapek Introduces Two New Exotic Mother of Pearl Dials in the Promenade and Antarctique Collections
If you had told me a few years ago that much of what I’d be doing at Worn & Wound in terms of new release coverage would be writing about mother of pearl and stone dial executions like a beat reporter at small town paper assigned to the high school basketball team, I probably would not have believed it. But here we are, multiple years into a trend that does not really seem to be letting up. It started with a resurfacing of high end vintage watches with exotic stone dials, moved to bigger brands capitalizing on the hype, shifted to smaller makers and microbrands offering impossibly affordable options, and now we’re back at the high end, and seeing brands looking for new ways to combine stones and materials in novel ways.
Last week, Czapek announced a pair of watches that make particularly interesting use of mother of pearl. The Antarctique S Ice Cloud is, at a glance, simply an Antarctique with a mother of pearl dial. But there’s some special artisanal work that has gone into the making of this particular dial, which has been conceived as a “poetic interpretation of cloud formations in an icy landscape.”
The dial is constructed from a piece of white mother of pearl that is cut to just 0.2mm thick – the height of two sheets of paper, according to Czapek. A varnish is then applied to the underside of the mother of pearl surface using a horsehair brush, which creates a cloudlike pattern that is unique to each dial. The varnish itself is tinted blue, and the artisan has to maintain tight control on the amount of varnish applied as it impacts both the thickness of the dial in its final form (and can lead to assembly issues if too thick) and also the depth of color. Once the proper balance is achieved, the dials are fired in an oven, permanently setting their unique patterns and brushstrokes. According to Czapek, only one artisan at their dial making partner, GT Cadrans, is capable of creating these intricate dials.
That’s a pretty impressive and high end treatment for mother of pearl, but it’s not, at least in my mind, as impressive as the dial created for the new Promenade Midnight Pearl. The Promenade is Czapek’s line of modern dress watches, and to this point they’ve introduced several with some truly outstanding dial treatments, often focusing on texture and geometry for a vaguely Art Deco vibe. The new Midnight Pearl represents something of a departure, and finds the brand combining mother of pearl and aventurine glass in a way that they claim has not been done before (they have a patent on the process).
Essentially what we have here is a sandwich dial that places a layer of aventurine over a Tahitian mother of pearl base. Tahitian mother of pearl is an evocative and quite beautiful type of MOP, that reads gray in many lighting conditions but possesses loud pops of purple, green, and other contrasting colors at certain angles and lighting conditions. It’s a significantly different type of experience than the more common white mother of pearl, and has always felt a lot more dramatic to my eye.
Czapek tells us that there is considerable skill involved in constructing these dials. The mother of pearl and aventurine layers are 0.2mm thick each, and can only be fitted together by hand. They indicate that the greatest technical hurdle is creating the small seconds subdial at the 4:30 position without compromising the mother of pearl underneath. The end result, however, is a dial that the brand says has a completely unique combination of iridescence and “sparkle” that represents a distinct interpretation of the evening sky.
Given the challenges of creating these dials, it’s not a surprise that both are quite limited. The Antarctique S Ice Cloud will be made in a run of just 10 pieces, while the Promenade Midnight Pearl is limited to 38. The retail price of the Midnight Pearl is $26,300, and the Antarctique S Ice Cloud sells for $33,600. Czapek
The post Czapek Introduces Two New Exotic Mother of Pearl Dials in the Promenade and Antarctique Collections appeared first on Worn & Wound.
from Worn & Wound https://ift.tt/9dtwrG2
Comments
Post a Comment