Métiers d’art are the delectable darlings amidst elaborate horological mechanisms, but don’t let that fool you. The tradition of decorative crafts is an important part of a watchmaker’s legacy, the savoir faire that elevates watchmaking to its pinnacle (by beautifying it, of course). Like true works of art, métiers d’art timepieces demand extensive effort and arcane know-how — we’re talking handcrafting spectacles to launch the proverbial fleet of a thousand here — making them essentially anti-industrial and therefore the ultimate luxury.
Roger Dubuis Replica Watches fosters its precious métiers d’art through an award-winning in-house studio on a refurbished farmhouse in Le Brassus. Surrounded by the idyll of the Vallée de Joux, master artisans toil to preserve and perpetuate an array of artistic disciplines passed down through generations, from classical techniques like enamelling and engraving to esoteric ones like shakudo and binchotan. For the craftsmen, these métiers are their way of life, a calling that manifests in a soupçon of artisanal models among the annual Villeret novelties.
Roger Dubuis Replica Watches ’s enamellers create their colours by mixing fine enamel powder with metallic oxides and pine oil, before painting with microscopically fine brushes.
The métiers d’art timepieces of Roger Dubuis Replica Watches depict a mythical menagerie culled from worldwide culture and folklore, fantastical mise-en-scènes that spotlight, among others, a living fossil, a picturesque wave, and even a pachydermal deity. The lattermost is in reverence to the Hindu god Ganesh, and debuts the prominent use of shakudo in watchmaking. Historically prized by samurai as a form of sword embellishment, the Japanese alloy of copper and gold achieves a black patina when treated with a warm chemical bath called rokusho, providing powerful contrast for the golden elephant godhead and damascened details surrounding it. So what did the industry do when they gazed upon this face of divinity? Awarded it the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève in Artistic Crafts, naturally.(Replica Patek Philippe Watches)
The creation of the award-winning Villeret Shakudo Ganesh begins with drawings of the Hindu god, before engraving the divinity and decorative motifs on the dial.
Roger Dubuis Replica Watches’s fascination with Oriental art forms is due largely in part to the creative prerogative of its métiers d’art studio. Freed from management direction and the horological past, artisans have the opportunity to explore unconventional techniques and materials when rendering their micro-tableaus. For the iconic image of The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the same rokusho treatment is applied to a white gold engraving of the sea swell for a sable shimmer, which plays off the textured surface of Mexican obsidian, a stone never before used for watch dials.
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