Vitreum is a new brand that has been making waves – both literally and figuratively – in the world of watchmaking with its amazingly beautiful dials. One of their earliest offerings was their FH01 Starry Night, a homage to Van Gogh. We caught up with Kaspar Reisner, founder of Vitreum, to know more about the brand and its ethos
Can you tell us about the brand – its concept and DNA?
Vitreum is a new brand; we originally started in 2018, but it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that everything really started rolling for us. I wanted to create a tangible product; I had earlier worked in marketing and spent a lot of time as a photographer and videographer, but I suddenly lost my passion for photography. Due to various reasons, I found myself wanting to do something creative; I wanted to work with my hands and create a tangible product – an honest product.
I wanted a mechanical watch. I stumbled upon this video about a Datograph Perpetual from A. Lange & Söhne, and I fell in love with it. But when I went online and saw how expensive it was, I was devastated because I didn’t have the money to buy it. Like any sensible person out there, I decided that I would just make my own watch. Everybody said it was a very bad idea, and that definitely kept me going.
How long did it take you from idea to finally having the actual watch in your hand?
It took a long time. Initially, in 2018, I just wanted to make a watch for myself. I had no idea about manufacturing a watch and a rough idea of how I wanted the watch to look. I started by sketching out a watch on Fusion 360 – a design software application – and soon, 3D-printed it, and wore it on my wrist for a while. In 2019, I went to an expo in Copenhagen and met the representative of a well-known brand there. She told me it was a good idea to make my own watch, perhaps even make my own components, but warned me against making enamel dials. According to her, only crazy people make enamel dials. I saw it as a challenge and a business opportunity. I loved the possibility of working on an ancient craft like an enamelling and learning that from scratch.
After a few false starts for a couple of years, during the pandemic, I found myself talking to people all over the world. I met Naomi Nevill – now my friend and partner in Vitreum – who was the last protege of a legendary enameller in the UK, called Phil Barnes. She does most of the enamelling for our watches. I do some of them as well, but she does all of the Rare Handcrafts collection. She’s doing them because she’s very talented when it comes to engraving and enamelling; she has taught me a lot about enamelling as well. It is a very intricate process and can go wrong very easily. It takes us 3 days, for instance, to make the dial for the Firebird watch.
Did you expect that level of difficulty and is that why you do limited numbers?
No, I did not; nobody told me that I couldn’t do this, so I tried it. It worked, and we are able to use that in a good way.
You’re now producing 100 watches – all with enamel dials; do you see a growth prospect in the future?
Because of the enamelling, there is a cap on the number of watches we can do. Right now, I’m the one assembling the watches, doing all the photography and, pretty much everything else, and also enamelling some of the dials. We plan to train some enamellers; we are already training one in Wales, but it is a difficult craft to learn. It takes a long time – at least 1-2 years – before a person can actually make something that is good.
How did you decide upon the name of the brand?
Vitreum means glass in Latin; we wanted a name that conveyed what we actually did. At the bottom of the core collection, it says “Vitrus Emaille”, which means vitreous enamel in Danish. Enamel is basically small glass particles that is placed on the top of a piece of metal. This is then put into a kiln and the glass fuses together with the metal and we get this amazing dial with incredible colour and depth. It just makes for a completely different look from that of lacquer dials; lacquer dials are amazing too, but you just get so much more depth with enamel; especially in our dials, which are thicker than most. When you’re using coloured transparent enamel, it makes for a completely different look; more opaque. We wanted to do something very different while using enamel and so use the colour enamel that is actually much more prevalent in jewellery, which is the background that Naomi has as well, and we wanted to incorporate that into our watches.
