Charm remains in the eye of the beholder. It can leave you speechless. It may stop you in your tracks and make you do a double take. The Christopher Ward C1 Bel Canto Lucia does all of the above.
This is a lovely watch; no doubt about that, not lovely as in an author’s throwaway line, however gorgeous as in spectacular, the kind you require to see direct to verify you were not dreaming.
The type of watch you require to see on your wrist, the kind that makes you picture how the light has fun with the dial at various times of the day.
The sort of watch that discovers you fantasizing, gazing at its face and stating to yourself, “Man, that’s one great watch”. The sort of watch you can lose your heart to, too.
Called after the protagonist of Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor, the Bel Canto Lucia takes motivation from among its most well-known scenes, in which Lucia sings about a bird that just she can see.
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The Bel Canto Lucia’s predecessor
The Bel Canto Lucia’s predecessor, the Christopher Ward C1 Bel Canto, showcased a chiming skeletonised issue. In a fortuitous twist of fate, admirers of that watch might not assist however observe how the exposed per hour striking system of the FS01 chiming module looked like a bird on the dial. Therefore a misconception was born.
“People began explaining really early on that FS01’s chiming works looked a bit like a bird. The somewhat awkward reality is that this wasn’t always deliberate– the wanted balance of the system led us there,” states Christopher Ward Product Director Jörg Bader.
Bader goes on to describe, “With Lucia, Mr Jones Watches has actually taken that delighted mishap and turned it into something really genuine. The obstacle for us was making sure that the art work might enter into the system itself, with the beak and tail maintaining authentic mechanical functions.”
The C1 Bel Canto Lucia follows in the steps of 2025’s C1 Celestial Moonphase, the very first watch partnership in between Christopher Ward and Mr Jones Watches. Its 300-piece run offered out in less than 48 hours and was consequently chosen at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG).
Due to its well-deserved success, talk turned to how the 2 business might work together once again, this time with a more technically enthusiastic quick: to incorporate Mr Jones Watches’ art work straight with the mechanical architecture of the watch.
On the Lucia, that similarity to a bird is no longer delegated one’s creativity. The legendary monster has actually ended up being an essential working part of the watch, a songbird at its centre. The position of its beak informs you whether the chime is engaged: when the pusher at 4 o’clock is pushed, a wonderful turning bug installed on the column wheel triggers the bird to open or close its beak.
Its tail has a rather more amazing task: for it is the hammer that provides the per hour D note. It truly is serendipity in movement.
“The Bel Canto watch was a dream to create for,” states illustrator and watch designer Andy Wilx. “I wished to develop a world you might peer into, and with a lot area in between the system and crystal, I had the ability to produce a style with genuine depth.”
Assembly
The bird isn’t just painted onto the dial. It is put together from 6 different stamped brass pieces that take a trip to Mr Jones Watches, where every one goes through a painstaking production procedure.
Here, the bird’s framing aspects are gold-plated. The scene’s striking colours are used utilizing a standard dial pad-printing procedure. Each and every colour needs its own printing plate and requires duplicated applications to provide Andy Wilx’s sensational style the grand treatment it should have.
Layers and layers of ink are printed on an art work determined in millimetres, as each of the 19 specific colours is put down with the accuracy and mastery that would make a heart cosmetic surgeon proud.
When ended up, the specific parts are exactly lined up and laminated together utilizing customized jigs established particularly for the task.
The finished assemblies are then gone back to Christopher Ward’s Atelier in Biel for last assembly onto the motion. This makes Mr Jones Watches an essential part of the production procedure of each C1 Bel Canto Lucia, instead of simply the source of its art work. The outcome stands out.
If the watch sounds anywhere near as great as it looks, it’s genuinely a work of art, however absolutely nothing less than you would get out of Christopher Ward, among the most stunning disruptive innovators in contemporary watchmaking, who has actually now turned disturbance into an art kind.
The C1 Bel Canto Lucia signs up with the Christopher Ward Atelier Collection as an open-series design and is offered from ₤ 3,995. To listen to the FS01 module yourself and see its excellent art work personally, book a consultation at the Christopher Ward display room, or safe yours straight at christopherward.com
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