Saint Gabriel
A dial worked in the stained-glass technique, with micro-painting in the manner of Byzantine art.
- Level
- Super Premium
- Diameter
- 44 mm
- Calibre
- ETA 6498-1 UNITASSwiss hand-wound calibre
- Dial
- Stained-glass technique, Byzantine micro-painting
- Case
- Stainless steel, yellow gold skeleton
- Strap
- Brown lizard 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
On a Byzantine icon in the British Museum collection, Gabriel holds a sceptre in his left hand and his right hand is raised. He wears a blue-green chiton and a red himation, and the icon is worked in egg tempera, gold and gesso on wood.
This dial does not take up the technique of the icon, but that of stained glass. Coloured glass has a property that painting does not. Pot-metal red was too opaque to let the light through; so craftsmen dipped colourless glass into molten red and obtained a thin layer over a transparent support. The colour stays, the opacity goes.
The same problem, moved onto forty-four millimetres: the colour has to be intense and still let the light come back from behind it. If the layer thickens, the face goes out.
Sources for this text: The British Museum, Byzantine icon of the Archangel Gabriel, Victoria and Albert Museum, the stained glass technique.
