Between the 5th and 12th of September 2024, a very special pièce unique Perception will make its debut at the Phillips Geneva auction sessions for Fall 2024. Those of you who came by our booth in the Beau Rivage during Watches and Wonders this year would have noticed Master Cheng hard at work on his rose engine over the course of the 5 days of exhibition. Despite the constant human traffic and consequently high levels of noise and vibration making this task far more difficult than it would have been in the sanctity of his cave-workshop back in Xinmi, Master Cheng actually managed to create three complete and unique dials — each with a different pattern — at the booth over the course of our 5 days there.
All three dials were encased and assembled into complete watches by a local Watchmaker, Mr Fabiano Pericles, at his workshop, Atelier Des Doct'Heures Horlogerie, in the Old Town, which we had pre-arranged for before our trip. And since the guilloché work on Perception’s dial constitutes a significant portion of its cost, and the assembly and testing was done by a Swiss watchmaker in the heart of Switzerland, these watches would, categorically speaking, be the only watches we have ever made to qualify for a particularly prestigious label that our industry tends to hold in high-esteem. It was in this knowledge that we therefore chose to inscribe each of the 3 watches with the light-hearted, satirical signature of “Crafted in China Geneva” to reflect the location in which the watches had been born.
This crossing-out and replacement demarcates the fact that just a week before that, Master Cheng would have been turning such dials in Xinmi, China. Yet during that week of exhibition, he was instead turning them on the other side of the world — in the very heart of Geneva.
Crafted by people, not places
Now, you might ask why we, as arguably the most proudly-Chinese brand around, would look to make a watch in Switzerland. While the entire undertaking is admittedly rather cheeky, our intent is far from it being a slight against watchmaking from any particular place of origin. The point we hoped to convey, rather, was that the geographical appellations of a timepiece, in truth, mean very little. Despite often being touted within the industry as a yardstick for quality, it often means very little in determining the actual quality of a watch — or any product, for that matter!
It is instead the talent and skills of the individual craftspeople, designers and manufacturers involved in the process that give birth to the craftsmanship standards of any given timepiece — and these talents are not confined to any specific geography, but instead, found the world over.
These dials — now objectively “crafted in Geneva” — are nonetheless of the exact same make and exceptional quality as they would have been in China the week prior. The unequivocal underlying conclusion, then, is that this perceived distinction in geographical prevalence and quality is arbitrary at best. While overheads may differ from place to place, the output of excellence and craft is rooted entirely in the human beings whose hands and minds give birth to each component of each watch.
This is something we feel strongly for as a brand and wish to fervently express to the wider watch community, as we seek to dispel the preconceptions around Chinese watchmaking and craft. And it is for this reason that we have also partnered up with Phillips to auction off the first of these special pieces during their upcoming Geneva auctions in September. As each of the dials turned at our booth was carved in a different guilloché pattern, these three dials are ostensibly ‘pièce unique’s. Furthermore, two of the three watches have been gifted — to Cheng as a memento to remember his time in Geneva by, and to Time and Tide’s Andrew McUtchen, respectively. This unique piece that is going up for auction with Phillips will therefore be the only instance in which one of these watches will ever come up for sale.
The dial has been left in pure, unplated silver, engine turned in a flinqué or sunburst pattern with 24 gradations. The chapter ring and base-plate have been executed in raw brass, befitting a watch that had been turned live, in front of a captive audience at our booth. We have also elected to pad-print our logo on the underside of the sapphire crystal as it would otherwise have been impossible to do so in Geneva. The resultant effect is the playful casting of the logo’s shadow onto the uninterrupted patterns of the dial, and more practically, it also gave Master Cheng the best chance to execute his guilloché at our booth without having to worry about the logo plate present on our usual dials. The watch is cased in 904L steel, and features the aforementioned “Crafted in China Geneva” demarcation on its caseback, as well as “pièce unique” engraved alongside it.
All the proceeds from this sale will be pledged to a UNESCO in support of their efforts to preserve intangible cultural heritage in China, and this feeds back into our brand’s core mission and responsibility — which is the preservation and progression of Chinese craftsmanship and culture.
Phillips has placed an initial estimate of CHF 2,500-5,000 on the piece.
Atelier Wen Perception "Crafted in China Geneva" Pièce Unique Technical Specifications
— 904L steel case and bracelet with contrasting surfaces and exceptional attention to finish.
— 40mm (Diameter) X 47mm (Lug-To-Lug), with a wearing experience closer to 38/39mm, suiting smaller and larger wrists alike.
— 9.4mm thickness.
— Screw-down crown.
— Water resistant to 100m/10ATM.
— Hand-crafted guilloché dial in pure silver, with intricate *flinqué* pattern, turned by China’s sole guilloché master craftsman, Cheng Yucai in the Beau Rivage, Geneva.
— Four-layered dial construction, inspired by ancient Chinese architectural tenets of Sunmao (friction/imbrication through mortise and tenon joints).
— Chinese huiwen-patterned chapter ring in raw brass, printed in Super-LumiNova ®, X1 grade.
— Applied rhodium-plated indices.
— Voluminous, heat-blued and hand-bent, leaf-shaped hands with Super-LumiNova ®, X1 grade.
— Double-domed sapphire crystal with 10 layers of anti-reflective coating.
— Hammered texture surrounding raised stone lion motif on caseback
— Semi-display sapphire crystal window showing balance bridge/rotor.
— Deeply CNC-engraved, 3D lettering of “Crafted in China Geneva”, acid-etched engraving of “Pièce Unique”.
— 10 layers of anti-reflective coating on caseback window.
— Customised 32 jewels extra-thin (3.4mm) Peacock SL1588A automatic movement decorated in circular côtes de genève, perlage.
— Tungsten rotor with circular côtes de genève and black rhodium plating.
— +/- 10s per day and further adjusted in 5 positions and for temperature fluctuations.
—Tested exhaustively by the Horological Research Institute of Light Industry (HRILI).
— 41 hour power reserve.
— 28,800 bph (4hz).
— Proprietary, patent-pending on-the-fly micro adjustment system.
— Telescopic deployant blade system for enhanced comfort and wearability.
— Assembled in Geneva, Switzerland.