Genuine Porcelain Watch Dial

Porcelain has always been a symbol of eternal beauty, bearing the civilization and wisdom of humanity for thousands of years. Its delicate texture, lustrous sheen, and subtle color variations are truly captivating.

• The luster of fine porcelain resembles oil: thick, warm, and captivating.

The luster of porcelain comes from the densely packed tiny bubbles on its surface and the texture of the glaze. The porcelain items we use daily are produced in a controlled assembly line manner, resulting in uniformly arranged bubbles that give the surface a glaring and monotonous shine.

To achieve a warm luster and delicate texture, two key conditions are required: pinewood firing and handcrafted work.

During the prolonged burning process, which lasts for over a day, the oils from the burning pinewood gradually merge into the porcelain surface, giving it a warm sheen.

A kiln fueled by pinewood (an enclosed room used for firing porcelain).

From selecting materials, using them, and drying times, to firing temperatures, the artisan's decisions at each of the dozen or so steps, based on their experience, determine the size and arrangement of the final bubbles. These spontaneously formed bubble structures create complex light reflections and refractions, which, combined with the pine resin, endow the porcelain with a lustrous, captivating glow and a romantic soul.

• To achieve a captivating luster, the tile must undergo a complex process that includes billet making, billet sharpening, glaze making, glaze blowing, wood preparation, wood filling, and kiln sealing.

Shape the porcelain base starting from the clay.

The skilled craftsman blows the porcelain glaze onto the dial using his mouth.

However, this romantic process also results in a very low success rate for pinewood-fired porcelain, especially in the production of porcelain watch dials.

Firstly, for the precision required by watch movements, the thickness of the dial must be less than 1 millimeter, with a tolerance of less than 0.02 millimeters. For stone and metal, this is relatively easy to achieve because metal can be extended, and stone and wood can be polished to meet the requirements through post-processing.

Only flawless porcelain pieces can be kept.

However, although porcelain originates from soft clay, once it is given a soul by fire, it cannot be further processed from the moment it is formed. All we can do is select.

Additionally, for porcelain watch dials with a diameter of 30 to 40 millimeters, minor details or small blemishes that are not noticeable on larger items are unacceptable on the dial. Even if a tiny speck of dust settles on the surface, it must be discarded. 

• It can be seen that, in the sunlight, the kiln (the room for firing porcelain) is filled with hazardous (fine dust).

As you can imagine, the romantic feel-driven production process and the primitive, dust-and-fire-filled production environment, combined with such stringent selection criteria, result in the remaining porcelain pieces being truly one in a hundred. Out of a kiln fired with 1,000 kilograms of pinewood, producing several thousand pieces, only a few dozen meet the standards, highlighting the difficulty and preciousness of the production process.

This is precisely why, although we cannot exhaustively cover all the porcelain watches on the market, we can responsibly say that throughout the history of watches, even including those rare pieces that appear at auctions, genuine porcelain dial watches are still very few and far between.