Since its founding in 1755, Vacheron Constantin has treated fine crafts as a fundamental part of watchmaking. Its ateliers have long carried forward guillochage, engraving, enamelling and gem-setting as skills to be cherished and passed on to younger generations. That same commitment extends through partnerships with institutions like the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, aimed not just at preserving individual artisans’ crafts, but at building public understanding of artistry that might otherwise fade from view.
The “One of Not Many Crafts Programme” pushes Vacheron’s commitment in a different direction. Rather than refining disciplines already native to horology, it invited artisans who have never touched a watch dial and asked them to reinvent their practice at a scale most have never attempted. As Product and Creation Director Sandrine Donguy stated, the Maison is “constantly pushing the boundaries of Haute Horlogerie,” and Legacy and Style Director Christian Selmoni describes the programme as “a form of creative incubation”.
The outcome is six concept watches under the title of “Métiers d’Art Tribute to the Animal Kingdom” collection. A series unified by a single idea, rendered through six crafts that have nothing to do with each other except the four millimetres of dial depth they were all forced to work within.
Feathersnake and Glassoctopus: Building Volume in Millimetres
Julien Vermeulen’s Feathersnake rises just three millimetres off the dial, its coiled body built from over two hundred fragments cut from seven rare Lophophore feathers, mounted on a metal support engineered purely to let the plumage’s natural iridescence look like scales. It’s an effect no paint could imitate.
Extraordinary skill at miniature scale: Simone Crestani shapes the glass octopus by flame, while Julien Vermeulen applies delicate feather fragments to create the iridescent scales of the snake.
To my eyes, the prize of the collection belongs to Simone Crestani’s Glassoctopus. An artist used to working on grand-scale glass sculptures was required to solve the same micro problem as Vermeulen by using transparent glass, melted and shaped rod by rod with tungsten tools, as only transparency allowed the cephalopod to seemingly float in a deep blue ocean, on a dial disk made from hand-guilloché gold.
Oraygami: Micro-Origami at Watch-Dial Scale
Anya Midori’s Oraygami miniaturises paper folding to an art form, sculpting manta rays from hand-dyed Japanese paper, some barely five millimetres long, using an origami sequence she had to invent from scratch, since nothing existing in the craft anticipated a ray gliding in three dimensions rather than lying flat.
Anya Midori hand-folds and shapes tiny manta rays from dyed Japanese paper for the Oraygami watch, translating the art of origami into three dimensions at an extraordinary scale.
Tigerbroidery, Papercroc and Woodenwings: Texture Over Depth
The other three watches concentrate on sculptural depth to create texture. Laura Baverstock’s Tigerbroidery required 9kt gold embroidery wire, far richer than the thin gilt threads goldwork normally uses, specifically so the tiger’s coat could have real volume.
Marianne Guély’s Papercroc, by contrast, stays resolutely monochrome using white cotton paper, embossed with heated brass matrices, so that all its relief comes from shadow and light raking across the surface.
From gold embroidery and sculpted paper to intricate wood marquetry, Laura Baverstock, Marianne Guély and Anna Le Corno bring three centuries-old crafts into miniature for Vacheron Constantin’s Tigerbroidery, Papercroc and Woodenwings.
Finally, Anna Le Corno’s Woodenwings leans on wood grain from 12 tree species as the expressive material, including smoked eucalyptus and dyed birch. They way they are assembled through three separate marquetry techniques, allow the falcon’s feathers to carry the same directional movement as a real wing.
The Calibre 2460 G4: Engineering the Dial as a Blank Canvas
Beneath the artistry of the dial, every watch in the collection shares the same engine for a reason, the Calibre 2460 G4 pushes hours, minutes, day and date out to four peripheral apertures, deliberately vacating the dial’s centre so all the limelight is on the artisan’s work. Even the oscillating weight reflects the theme of each watch with a hand-engraved 22kt gold rotor featuring motifs drawn with the artisans’ own tools.
What comes through most clearly in the artisans’ own accounts is how different this project was from anything else they have done and how much it pushed the boundaries of their skills. Vermeulen describes working in such tight concentration that his own heartbeat threatened to disturb a feather; Crestani calls the project “a real turning point” after twenty-five years with glass; and Guély, who says she had long dreamed of bringing paper into watchmaking, calls the invitation “almost like destiny”.
The six Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art Tribute to the Animal Kingdom watches, united by the Calibre 2460 G4, which moves the time and calendar displays to the edge of the dial to leave the centre free for the artisans’ work.
With Tribute to the Animal Kingdom, Vacheron Constantin fulfils a mission that goes well beyond horology. The maison is contributing to the survival of art forms that are in great danger of extinction and in the process, created six outstanding watches.
Author: Andrew Hildreth
Other watches with intricate dials recently reviewed by I-M Inquisitive Minds include Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Rendez-Vous Jewellery Night & Day and some of the pieces in our feature, Putting Up the Ritz.
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