Leather and Silk: Materials for Unconventional Dials
Early this year, Hermès introduced a new, limited-edition model with a leather dial, following Hublot's foray into the trend last year. In 2024, the Belgian brand Ressence also introduced a watch face of hand-dyed indigo silk. And Harry Winston has a whole timepiece collection devoted to embossed silk dials in its métier d'art range.
'It's such a beautiful and unique craft,' said Benjamin Chee of the Singapore-based watchmaker Celadon, which has produced watches with dials of hand-embroidered Suzhou silk since 2017. (The silk is created in Suzhou, a city in China's Jiangsu Province, which for centuries has been a center of silk weaving and embroidery.)
Founded in 2012, Celadon today offers a bespoke service that allows collectors to design their own embroidered silk-dial timepiece that includes the brand's in-house CH5 movement ($30,000).
'Historically, the luxury goods China produced were porcelain and silk,' Mr. Chee said in a video call from Singapore. 'Suzhou silk is a very fine expression of silk, so I thought that would be a very good art form to incorporate into my watches because the dial is so small that it allows a high level of embroidery without being absurdly expensive.'
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