Augustin Matei is a Romanian designer of one-off watches. He built the technique he uses today on his own, in a craft usually passed from master to apprentice. It took him four years before the first dial came out as he had seen it.
He came to the dial from icon painting, and it shows: the order of the layers, the patience with which a surface is built and the way the gold goes on last are old rules, moved onto four centimetres of metal.
There is a great deal to say about technique. About those who commission, there is not. The workshop keeps what it is working on, and for whom, to itself, and about some pieces nothing is written at all.
Pieces have reached a royal house and a state delegation. On each of them the workshop stays silent until the owner decides otherwise.
The workshop works in Bucharest, at 4 Ion Ghica Street.
A public portfolio of 73 one-off watches.
How a dial is worked
Three techniques, on the same surface
01
Micro-painting
Colour is built in thin layers. Each layer dries before the next, and depth appears only at the fourth or the fifth.
02
Hand engraving
The line is cut into metal by hand. It cannot be erased and cannot be corrected: a mistake means a new disc and the work begun again.
03
Micro-sculpture
The relief is taken out of the material rather than added on top of it. That is why the shadow shifts with the angle the dial is seen from, and the scene seems to breathe.
From the workshop
Pieces from the portfolio
Photographs of finished pieces, on their owners and in the workshop. Each opens full size on tap.
Films
From the workshop, on screen
AtlantisThe UniverseThe movement in viewAugustin Matei as a quiz question on TVR 2, with Virgil Ianțu
No piece is described through adjectives. Below are the components, in the manufacturer's nomenclature, as they appear on the records of the public portfolio.
01
Movement
Swiss calibre, automatic or hand-wound.
Sellita SW-200
Sellita SW-500
ETA 2824-2
ETA 2892
ETA 6497-1 UNITAS
ETA 6498-1 UNITAS
ETA 7750 Valjoux
STP
02
Power reserve
42 hours
On a Sellita SW-200 Top Grade, with 26 jewels. An automatic calibre winds from the movement of the wrist that wears it.
03
Complications
Beyond the base function, where the piece calls for it.
chronograph
skeleton
04
Dial
Worked by hand, through micro-painting, hand engraving and micro-sculpture. It is the one surface of the piece on which a story can be read.
silver
mother-of-pearl
diamonds
natural stone
meteorite
gold
05
Case
Stainless steel.
Some pieces have a case plated in black PVD or made in rose gold; others carry gold elements: a skeleton, a bezel.
06
Crystal
9 on the Mohs scale
It resists scratching, not impact.
The second half is always said. The first on its own would be a promise the material does not keep.
07
Strap
Hand-worked leather.
alligator
ostrich
lizard
duck
python
shark
stingray
08
Price
The price is set individually, in direct conversation with the watch designer.
It follows from the movement, from the materials of the dial and from the complexity of the composition.
