Halcyon, Watch with Enamel Painting on Porcelain Dial

26 janvier 2023

The art of porcelain is the art of time and fire. To create a flawless porcelain, the artisan shall wait, wait for the clay to dry, wait for the fire to stoke, and for the porcelain to cool down. Today, we frequently lament that time is short and that life is moving too fast. Over a thousand years ago, the Ancients have showed us how to merge with time and make the most of it.

Halcyon Origin, a precious watch with enamel miniature painting on porcelain dial. The nobility and serenity of porcelain and the flamboyance of enamel micro-painting are merged on the wrist. Within a hand's reach, you can feel the tranquility of this art that stands still in time, and relish the culture and story behind it.

Halcyon, Born in Jingdezhen ( 90% of the more than 300,000 pieces of porcelain in the Palace's collection come from Jingdezhen Shanqixiang, the Curator of the Palace Museum), the hometown of porcelains, founded by a group of people who are passionate about porcelains and have made a career out of it - university teachers, heads of porcelain schools, porcelain artisans, painters, artists - all of whom have different professions but who all concur that porcelains hold a unique allure.

The collection introduction of Sun Dena's work, Halcyon Chief artist.

Sun Dena, Halcyon Chief Artist, Vice President of porcelain & porcelain Arts and Crafts Institute.

“Tiger”, Sun Dena's Work, Collected by the Chinese Porcelain & porcelain Museum

"Cat on the Rock", Sun Dena's Work, Collected by Thomas Bach, President of the Olympic Games

Unique JingDeZhen's Glaze Fired by Dragon Kiln

There are 72 stages in the production of porcelain, including billet making, billet sharpening, glaze making, glaze blowing, wood preparation, wood filling, and kiln sealing. The distinctive Jingdezhen glaze requires more than 24 hours of stoking at 1,400 degrees in a huge 1,000-year-old kiln - the Dragon Kiln, with local pine wood as fuel. For the thin (less than 1 mm) porcelain tiles that need to stand alone as dials, this raw and nature-driven process is fraught with danger, a tiny change in air temperature during the drying process or a speck of dust during the blowing of the glaze might destroy the prior efforts.

Porcelain has always mesmerized people with its beautiful layers of color and warm, rich glow that resembles jade. It always seems like a gentleman genuinely blends in and exudes a recognizable aristocratic aura in various lighting and shadow conditions. porcelains may be admired not only for its beauty but also for the rich cultural history that it has been rooted in for nearly a thousand years. This may be due to its elegance and sanctity, or perhaps because it is immortal and unchanging. Like enjoying good music or reading poetry, it was thought that appreciating porcelains may help one develop a calmer mind and a better moral compass.

The painting is kind of improvisation from artist, that will be slightly different from each other

Although pieces of porcelain have been used in watches before, this is the first time a dial has reflected Jingdezhen's colors. Halcyon Origin has transformed viewing time into a poetic and serene pleasure, much like its noble predecessors.

It takes a painter at least ten years from the start of Chinese painting to paint on porcelain, to miniature-painting, and then to actually use enamel to paint miniature-painted works. It is one of the most difficult techniques in porcelain painting. And this is just one of several factors that contribute to the rarity of enamel miniature-paintings.

On the other hand, enamel pigments could only be fired at the precise temperature to achieve the expected color, e.g., a red pigment would be grey if fired at a higher temperature, or green if fired at a lower temperature. The process of creating an enamel miniature-painting requires a dozen to dozens of firings at temperatures, from a high temperature of over a thousand degrees to a low temperature of a few hundred degrees. Every session has the risk of breaking, cracking, or blistering; any fragmentation indicates that the artist's hours of concentration, their inspiration, and all of their labor went in waste. It hurts too much to have a piece of work that you've taken as your life goes up in flames.

The pigment has to be applied multitimes to achieve the "graduate change"

The current situation in which enamel works are hard to find has been influenced by the high threshold for painters on the one hand, and the arduous and laborious process of generating works on the other.

The reason we use enamel is quite simply, it is one of breathtaking beauty.

“Nothing else renders color like enamel does,"

The meeting of enamel micro-painting miniatures and porcelains is a stunning match.

The luster of the porcelain, and the suspension effect of the transparent glaze structure, make the enamels even more dynamic and vibrant, and the rich luster of the porcelains with the additional fishes and dragons seems to reveal the untold beauty of the mountains, the wondrous lands, and the misty waves. This is the harmonious, natural, lingering beauty of oriental aesthetics.

For individuals who would like to know more and interact with us, we have created a video regarding the enameling micro-painting process we use.

Silver, because of its soft luster, has always been the best company for porcelain, and there is a tradition of using silver to decorate porcelain all over the world.

The Origin's case is forged from 64g of silver (92.5%) and is rhodium plated to prevent the surface from oxidizing into black. (0.20mic), (the best plating process available for silver, and rhodium is one of the most expensive metals in the world. US$1,000/g)

Carefully polished to a fine finish manually，No details are spared.

The ocean is the origin of all life, and it connects all of us, scattered around the world. For the opening of Halcyon, we have created two works inspired by the ocean, in the hope that Origin will bring you energy, peace and fortune on the one hand, and in the face of the epidemic on the other, that the epidemic is not something that should divide us, but rather bring us closer together to confront the common problem of humanity.

The sea and cliff pattern

It is a traditional Chinese design that has sea and mountain as well as a representation of blessings and longevity. In ancient China, this motif was embroidered on each official robe.

The painting is kind of improvisation from artist, that will be different from each other

The Dragon

The dragon has a special status and symbolic meaning in traditional Chinese culture, being the most powerful and holy creature in legend, as well as a symbol of the emperor or sage. We have chosen the traditional composition of two dragons playing with a pearl (the sun) and have delicately replaced the sun to the sundial, which is also a symbol of time, with two dragons chasing it. As the most impressive and complicated of the three Origin models, only Ms. Sun Dena could paint the dragon as a legendary creature in all its majestic.