How Jaquet Droz’s Craftsmen Turn Watch Dials into Wearable Art

Each lotus-flower leaf on the Magic Lotus Automaton is hand-painted in Grand Feu enamel. Depending on the design of watch, sometimes the brush must be almost as thin as a human hair to finesse the nuances of the dial.

The enamel is broken up with a mortar and pestle and ground into a powder. Water is added to create the paint-like paste for depicting the dial.

A hundred shades of enamel powders line the studio wall like jars of spices waiting to be mixed into a paste.

An artisan is busy at work against the backdrop of the scenic La Chaux-de-Fonds countryside. He’ll spend hours peering into the magnifying lens to place pieces into a mosaic.

Incredibly, the face of the elephant shown here is made from tiny pieces of crushed quail eggshells. The pieces are so small that to the naked eye they almost look like sand. The broken-up shells have natural variations in colour and are sorted by hue in containers the size of a contact lens case, so that the shadowing and details of the elephant’s face can come to life. An in-house artisan discovered this form of mosaic artwork in Vietnam and brought it back to the Swiss valley. After all of the pieces have been set in place, the dial is covered with a lacquer coating for permanence—a delicate process given the fragile nature of the material.

Each piece is placed by hand with tweezers until the scene comes together. This Lilliputian-size koi fish is 8.5mm long, made of gold and hand-painted—a process that takes almost three hours. Once it’s placed on the dial and the automaton is activated, the fish moves so it appears to be swimming through the water.

The enamel piece is placed on a special tray and fired in a kiln to set the material. Each colour requires a particular timing and temperature.

The intricate engraving work, seen here on the caseback and movement of Jaquet Droz’s Tropical Bird Repeater automaton, is done by hand with a burin (a steel engraving tool) under a magnifying loupe.