Saturday, July 21, 2018

Glashutte & The Meissen Porcelain Dial

Glashutte Original and the Meissen Porcelain company collaborated and made this White Dial Beauty.

Head on to the Deployant page for a full read. For now, enjoy the photos of the Meissen Porcelain dial which has more than 300 years of history under their belt. Combining expertise both companies possess, the result is the Senator Meissen dial.

This Meissen sample comes as a time only timepiece. Simple, elegant and very handsome. The classic Senator is aesthetically pleasing, proportionate and neat.

The blue hands compliments the dial and rose gold case. Why is the porcelain dial desired? For one, they are rather rare and secondly and more importantly, the dials are said to maintain its colouration for a decades.

Although this is not a limited edition, each dial is individually numbered. All the markers including the Meissen cross swords trademark and the Glashutte brand name are hand painted on the porcelain dials.

A porcelain dial is not easy to manufacture. Lots of skill goes into making one of these dials. For starters the liquid porcelain is applied to a disc and then fired at between 1,200 °C to 1,400 °C. Only milky white flawless discs that meet their stringent requirements are selected and hand painted.

To make one of these dials, the craftsmen takes between 8-10 hours hand painting each marker or logo using very fine brush. This requires dextrous hands with full on concentration too.

As with all hand painted markers, it is not "perfect". This macro shot clearly shows the outcome.

8 and 9 hand painted marker - again, a clear sign it is hand painted and not machine stamped.

As much as one expects the highest of quality from the Meissen manufacture, even the Glashutte logo is not perfectly drawn. But what is true about such hand crafted dials is that no two are alike which makes each dial unique.

The finishing on the inside of the case finishing - brushed interior.

The blued hands...

The complete package...

One last look at the symbol of the Meissen dial

It is sad to note that the collaboration has stopped and that Meissen Porcelain no longer makes these kinds of dials for Glashutte Original. Their short lived collaboration launches some very iconic pieces - the Singapore Edition commemorating 40 years of nationhood, the Senator Meissen Tourbillon, just to name few.

Perhaps the folks at Glashutte Original will find another partner or perhaps someone else will start noticing a missing segment in the luxury watch space and look at doing a series for themselves. These porcelain dials are awesome.

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