The Athos Eagle
The eagle and the mountain, on a dial worked by hand.
- Level
- Premium
- Diameter
- 44 mm
- Calibre
- ETA 2824-2Swiss automatic calibre
- Dial
- Dial worked by hand
- Case
- Sapphire crystal
- Strap
- Alligator 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
In the late Byzantine centuries the double-headed eagle was the main symbol of the state, embroidered even on church vestments. It outlived the empire that used it: in 1472, after his marriage to the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, the ruler of Moscow adopted it as his own emblem.
Mount Athos has administered its own peninsula since 972, through an act signed by the emperor John I Tzimiskes. The first organised monastery, the Great Lavra, had been founded nine years earlier. A form of uninterrupted self-government of more than ten centuries.
On the dial the feathers are cut one by one, with the milling tool. There is no shortcut and no second attempt on the same disc: one wrong line means new material and the work from the start.
Two heads on a surface of four centimetres ask for a symmetry the eye checks instantly. It is the kind of element that forgives not even half a millimetre.
Sources for this text: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Byzantine collection, UNESCO, Mount Athos, Britannica, Mount Athos.
