Saint Nectarios
An icon face, worked in micro-painting.
- Level
- Premium
- Diameter
- 43.5 mm
- Calibre
- Swiss automatic
- Dial
- Micro-painting in the Byzantine manner
- Case
- Sapphire crystal
- Strap
- Leather, handmade
- Price
- Set individually, in direct conversation with the watch designer.
The workshop takes on a small number of commissions each year.
The story on the dial
Icon painting is not a style, it is a set of rules centuries old. The proportion of the face is set in advance. The order of the layers does not change: the ground first, then the flesh tones in successive planes from dark towards light, and the gold at the end, never before.
The rules do not relax when the support changes. A face painted on silver, at the size of a coin, asks for the same steps, in the same order, with a brush of a few hairs.
The difference is that there is no correction. On wood, a wrong layer can be covered. On a dial, one layer too many lifts the relief above the tolerance at which the hands pass freely, and the piece stops for a reason other than the aesthetic one.
So the work goes slowly and dries completely between layers. Patience is not a quality of the craftsman, it is a technical condition.
