Kong's detailed report on the Azimuth Round-1 White Jade Watch media session highlights a unique collaboration between Azimuth Watch and Jade Culture. This article is crucial for understanding the intricate challenges and innovative techniques involved in crafting ultra-thin jade dials, a process that blends traditional jade artistry with contemporary watchmaking.
Recently Azimuth Watch launched
their Round-1 White Jade watch, jointly developed with Jade Culture.
Azimuth is no stranger in the watch industry, started their venture in
2004, by Christopher Long and Alvin Lye. Jade Culture, though a young
company founded in 2011, both the founders, Linbert Lim and Tong Ping
Heng, are well-versed in the jade design and trade with access to raw
jade material, processing factory and craftsmen in China.
How both these local Singapore companies come together is interesting.
Jade
has a long history since the early Chinese dynasties. During ancient
China, jades were only worn by the royalty and high-ranking officers.
The measure of wealth was jades in possession and not gold. Even the
medals of 2008 Beijing Olympics were of jadeites and nephites, the first
time alternate materials were used for medals in the Olympic, that
explains the prestigious symbolism of jade.
However,
for generations, jade has a notion of only worn by elderly as
adornments and amulets. The couple at Jade Culture was thinking of ways
to appeal to the younger and more fashion-savvy segment and to shift
the perception that jade could be contemporary and fashionable through
design. And one of the approaches is combining jade with timepiece.
After some discussions, both the Singapore companies began the
collaboration.
After one and half year of
work, the Azimuth Round-1 White Jade watch comes to fruition with
limited production of twenty pieces.
Round-1 White Jade watch, Azimuth's Chrisopher Long & Alvin Lye and Jade Culture's Linbert Lim and Tong Ping Heng.
Why does it take over one and half year to launch the watch?
According to both parties, many challenges were encountered during the development.
For
Jade Culture, the first challenge is to process the thickness of the
jade disc-block to ultra-thin jade wafer of precision 0.60 to 0.80mm in
their China factory. Almost all the time, jades craftswork are on
chunkier (thicker) blocks and carved into figurines. The whole control is with the machinist's judgement
and it is not any CNC machines.
Jade disc-blocks (note for Round-1 White Watch, white jades (nephrites) are used.
Rejected dials due to inclusions and 'cloudiness'.
After getting to the required thickness, a centre hole is drilled, and rejects occurred too as some pieces cracked!
That's
not the end of the process. To be accepted as a usable dial, the dial
must not have inclusions as shown in the above and below pictures.
The
challenging part, these inclusions are not conspicuous during the
jade-block stage, and they can only be detected after being grind down to the thickness required.
It
is more of a game of probability. You only know if you get a perfect (no inclusion) piece at the end of the grinding process and after that,
hopefully, the perfect pieces survive the centre-hole drilling process.
Rejected due to inclusions.
According to Jade Culture, their hit ratio is extremely low ... to get a perfect piece, at least 20 pieces were scrapped.
As
for the Azimuth, their hurdle is the thickness consistency across the
entire nephrite-dial surface (flatness) after mounting the white-jade
onto the brass dial-plate.
The initial few batches of nephrite-dials were unusable as the irregular flatness caused the minute-hand to be stucked.
Above is one of the twenty pieces for the Round-1 White ... note the beautiful short-listed nephrite-dial.
A quick brief about Jade.
Jade
is a generic word for two group of stones. The above white is called
the nephrite, which also known as soft jade, mostly found in Xinjang
area in China, with hardness of 6.0 to 6.5 Mohs.
While the green type is called the jadeite or hard jade, hardness is 6.5 to 7.0 Mohs, mainly found in Myanmar.
Housed in 42mm stainless steel case.
The Breguet-hands are traditionally blued as a single batch for same colour consistency.
Dome sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on the second-surface(underside) of the crystal.
Only hour index '8' printed, the Chinese auspicious number.
Wonder what is the warranty coverage for the nephrite dial, in case issue occurs.
Solid caseback with the serial number engraved. Within is the robust automatic ETA 2824 with 40 hours power reserve.
Steel deployant buckle with alligator leather strap.
Perhaps an option for ardillion buckle for the slim wrists.
A Jadedite dial ... perhaps for the Round-2 Watch.
The
Round-1 White should appeal to those who know about jade and appreciate
the difficult process to obtain clear nephrite dials. Also to those
who like understated pieces.
What are your thoughts about this White Jade Watch?
Kong
This message has been edited by Kong on 2013-07-22 19:11:57 
