In the age of artificial intelligence, Vacheron Constantin is betting on something A.I. cannot replicate: the skill of the human hand.
At Homo Faber, the international craft biennial in Venice, the Swiss watchmaker recently presented six métiers d’art watches that adapted techniques rarely associated with watchmaking to the scale of a dial.
“Métiers d’art are one of the main avenues through which watch brands will express themselves in the future,” Christian Selmoni, Vacheron Constantin’s legacy and style director, said in a phone interview. “For us, they are an important path forward.”
The fourth edition of Homo Faber, titled “An Island of Light,” opened Sept. 1 and is to run through Sept. 30 under the artistic direction of Es Devlin, the British artist and designer. The event’s website said it has brought together more than 500 artisans from 70 countries at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, a cultural center on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and was organized by the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship. The foundation was established in 2016 by Johann Rupert, the chairman of Compagnie Financière Richemont, which owns such luxury brands as Vacheron Constantin, Cartier and Piaget, and Franco Cologni, a former Richemont executive.
Vacheron Constantin, which has participated in every Homo Faber edition since it began in 2018, presented the Tribute to the Animal Kingdom collection, six 42-millimeter timepieces created with independent artisans who had little or no experience in watchmaking. The effort was part of the company’s One of Not Many Crafts program, dedicated to fostering the future of horological craftsmanship. (And it was the first time the house introduced watches at the biennial that had been created by independent designers working with its design studio rather than showcasing its own in-house expertise.)
“What these artisans had in common was that they had never worked on such a small surface,” Mr. Selmoni said. “Their challenge was to express their craft on a dial roughly 30 millimeters in diameter.”
Among the six was the Glassoctopus watch (Ref. 7630A/000R-H205), in which a transparent octopus appeared to float above a guilloché gold dial with a midnight-blue lacquer finish. Created by Simone Crestani, a glassmaker in Vicenza, Italy, the sculpture was housed in an 18-karat rose gold case.
“When Vacheron Constantin asked if I could make a miniature glass sculpture for a watch dial, I wasn’t sure it was possible,” Mr. Crestani said in a phone interview from Vicenza. “I’m used to working on very small details, but never at this scale.”
Adding the octopus’s suction cups and surface texture required reheating the glass, but the heat caused the thin material to contract. So, “instead of pulling a whole tentacle, I built it in a series of tiny sections,” he said. “It took many, many trials. But now I know the secret.”
“Making something this small was ultimately as demanding as making a monumental piece,” he noted.
For the Tigerbroidery watch (Ref. 7630A/000G-H207) housed in an 18-karat white gold case, the British embroidery artist Laura Baverstock used yellow- and white-gold threads on green silk and cotton to depict a tiger in tall grass. “The design had to be reduced considerably to fit the dial,” she said in a phone interview from London. “It was much smaller than anything I would normally make.”
According to Ms. Baverstock, standard embroidery tools and materials were not suitable at that scale. She worked with specialist British manufacturers to develop tools for twisting and winding nine-karat gold into embroidery thread, which then was stitched using custom 0.25-millimeter needles.
The other four watches used feathers, paper and wood on their dials. Julien Vermeulen, a feather artist in Paris, created a serpent from about 200 fragments of iridescent feathers. Anya Midori, a micro-origami artist in Germany, folded six manta rays from Japanese paper while Marianne Guély, a paper artist in Paris, formed a crocodile from embossed, cut and layered cotton paper. And Anna Le Corno, a marquetry artist in Paris, used 12 varieties of wood to create a three-dimensional falcon.
All six timepieces are functioning concept watches powered by the house’s automatic Caliber 2460 G4, which displays the hours, minutes, day and date through four apertures around the dial’s edge. The watches, which will not be offered for sale, are to be added to the house’s archive.
“The goal is eventually to integrate these techniques into unique Les Cabinotiers timepieces or small métiers d’art series,” Mr. Selmoni said (Les Cabinotiers is the company department specializing in one-of-a-kind and bespoke pieces).
“But for now, we are acting as a creative incubator for new ideas.”
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